Letters

A recent letter submitted by Amy Paradise admirably reveals her local heritage in Southampton, which predates the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the foundation of our republic [“Indivisible,” Letters, November 6]. I respect her right to protest and sympathize with her offense taken by the callous remarks of a passerby during a demonstration.

Ms. Paradise, however, would do well to review the tenets that created these fine documents that are the basis for our republic, as well as the documents themselves.

Again, she laments the “stacked Supreme Court.” Last month, in another letter, she decried Republican usage of “every dirty trick to stack the Supreme Court.”

Let’s examine her statements: President Donald Trump exercised his right to nominate justices as a replacement. Typically, the nominee will reflect the president’s own political and legal views. The nominee is fully vetted before the entire Senate, debated, then approved by a simple majority. This was precisely the process followed in his three appointments to the Supreme Court, in accordance with the Constitution.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 by proposing legislation that would have allowed him to appoint a new justice for every sitting justice over the age of 70, up to a maximum of six new justices, that would have certainly been “stacking.” Her righteous indignation is muted by both history and more recent events.

She claimed “we had a good functioning government until the politicians, mostly Republicans,” came along and made a mess of things. Never mind that the previous Democrat administration allowed over 10 million undocumented, unvetted immigrants into our country while ignoring the great quantities of lethal fentanyl and human trafficking that followed in its wake.

In response to this heartbreaking scenario, the current administration has decided to enforce our immigration laws by permitting ICE to do its job. Chaos ensued when protesters in blue cities and states were allowed to rampage, seize, destroy or damage government property, setting fire to government property, all while attacking ICE agents with rocks, sticks and even incendiary devices, including a mortar that injured an officer in Portland, Oregon.

Federal Protective Services officers were sent to assist with regaining order. When Trump sent the National Guard to protect these federal agents and federal property, U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut argued that all this violence was exaggerated, “simply untethered to facts,” blocking the National Guard. An appeals court thought otherwise, correctly rejecting Immergut’s decision by concluding, “The undisputed facts show that protesters damaged a federal building, leading to closure for over three weeks, attempted to burn the building down …”

Indeed, havoc ensued during another “mostly peaceful protest” in liberal land.

John Porta

Westhampton