Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed The Tennessee Star’s national political editor Neil McCabe to the newsmaker line to describe the scene outside of Justice Alito’s private residency, address mob rule, and speculate on the motivation of the leaker.
Leahy: We are joined now by Neil W. McCabe, the best Washington correspondent in the country, and the national political editor for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Neil, our cameras were outside the residence of Justice Samuel Alito on Monday. What did we find out there?
McCabe: Alito is just the latest of the conservative justices who have been targeted. And this is sort of a new thing in American politics where you actually start going to the guy’s house.
It’s not something that you would really talk about, say, a generation ago. And it brings up a lot of very interesting issues because there are federal laws and state laws.
But the federal law says you can’t pressure a government official, especially a judge, to do something Left or Right. You’re not supposed to put any pressure on a judge one way or the other.
And so not only could you possibly be charged with threatening a federal official, but it also brings you into maybe obstruction of justice. And so there’s that. And then, of course, what kind of Supreme Court do we have if these guys are making decisions because there are people barking at them in front of their house or on their sidewalk?
And so it’s really an interesting situation, and scary, because the Biden administration and the Biden White House sort of laughed this off and dismissed it. And frankly, a lot of Democrats think it’s great that these guys have mobs barking at them in the front yard.
Leahy: I’ve been looking at the U.S. Code 18 Section 15:07, prohibits picketing or parading outside the residence of a judge, any judge, with the intent to influence them, and they show it’s a misdemeanor.
They could be fined and imprisoned for up to one year. Now our cameras were outside the residence of Justice Alito, which is, I believe, in Alexandria, Virginia.
That’s what we said, right? And it’s just a couple of miles away from the offices of the U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. She has an office in Alexandria, not far from where these protesters were breaking federal law. Is she or Merrick Garland going to enforce that law?
McCabe: No, they’re not going to do that. The White House is kind of in a tough spot because Biden did sell himself as this moderate, and he’s always kind of danced along the lines when it came to abortion.
Certainly, in his younger days before Roe v. Wade, he called himself a pro-life guy. I’d have to look it up but I would guess that he voted to ban late-term abortion.
And so even in these confirmation hearings, I remember very vividly Clarence Thomas trying to tease them out on Roe v. Wade. And then even with the Alito hearing, he’s the guy who said to Alito, hey, if you have the votes, forget about precedent. Why don’t you just throw out Roe v. Wade?
To hold on to their donor base – I’m not talking about their voter base, their donor base – the Democrats have to be hardcore absolutist and unforgiving on abortion. And so that’s where they’re at right now. And I don’t think the country is there at all.
Leahy: Where does this go, Neil? Do they keep protesting outside the Supreme Court justices’ residences? Will it intimidate the five Supreme Court justices who are apparently in favor of this draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade? And when will this be released?
McCabe: It’s interesting. I think that if it wasn’t a left-wing clerk that leaked to Politico, the German-owned media outlet, it was probably Roberts and his team because they’re desperate. Roberts is also trying to derail the Alito decision.
But I don’t think the five conservative justices are going to give up. They had tremendous opposition to their own confirmation and they lived through it.
And so I think that especially a guy like Kavanaugh, after what they put that poor man through, there’s no way he’s going to cave now. It’s just going to open up a very dangerous and crazy chapter of our democracy. And you wonder, has this thing run out of string? How long can you run a Supreme Court like this?
Leahy: You raise a very interesting speculation that if it wasn’t a left-wing law clerk, it was perhaps someone associated with Chief Justice Roberts. That’s just speculation, right? There’s no evidence to that effect.
McCabe: That is McCabe speculation. But there was a 2019 abortion case where it was 44, and Roberts voted with the pro-abortion side, but wrote an independent opinion.
And in that opinion, he said, hey, I don’t agree with this decision, but I’m voting with these guys because I believe in precedent. And it’s been reported in The Washington Post that Roberts and his clerks are trying to pick off maybe Barrett or Kavanaugh to try to sort of make this thing more narrow.
The sort of signature of the Roberts court is not making major changes. And if there is a change, it’s always very small and he’s always nipping at the edges. This session is going to see big changes.
You’re going to have the overturn of Roe v. Wade. You’re going to have a big gun decision coming out of the New York gun case, and then you have a school prayer case involving the football coach. And behind these big changes are the conservatives.
Carmichael: Neil, let me ask you a question: How do you nip away at the edges? The Mississippi law is – I’ve not read the whole law, but I’ve read an article about it written by somebody who has read it – and here are the things, the elements of that law that stood out to me. One, is it says that you cannot have an abortion, a woman cannot have an abortion after 15 weeks unless the life of the mother is at stake, or if the baby is.
And I can’t remember exactly the language, but deemed to be not viable or some term in terms of deformity. The Left is now saying that a woman should be able to have an abortion up to the day of the delivery. And Roe v. Wade, there’s no precedent that says that. The precedent has always been a question of when is the fetus viable, right?
McCabe: The constitutional-line right in Roe v. Wade was by trimester. And in Casey the 1992 case they made it viability. And so viability the idea was, hey, as time goes on medical science will be able to sort of reach in and save these babies a lot sooner.
If you are going to make it narrow, you would basically say, okay, we’re going to throw out trimesters, we’re going to throw out viability and now we’re just going to say 15 weeks and we’re going to make it narrow in that case.
You can write in the opinion that, hey, this thing is not supposed to be expanded, this thing is not to be read in any different way, and you basically make it a very tight and specific case, which is what Roberts is trying to do.
Listen to the interview:
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