NORMAL AND NOT: It seems to be "not normal" now!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

It's plainly the norm over time: For better or worse, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is promoting a book.

Last night, she appeared on the Fox News Channel's Special Report in connection with that effort.

Fox News Digital offers this news report about her interview on that program with Bret Baier. At one point, Justice Barrett seemed to be rolling along on a smooth, level road. 

As you can see at Mediate, she'd given voice to these fully conventional thoughts:

JUSTICE BARRETT (9/8/25): The genius of our Constitution—and I talk about this in the book when I describe originalism, I describe our written Constitution—is that it’s written at varying levels of generality. 

So sometimes it’s very specific. The president has to be at least 35 years old. But sometimes it’s very general. We’re protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. We have freedom of speech. And to have freedom of speech doesn’t mean that you have only to pass out pamphlets in a town square. I mean, it means you have freedom to be on broadcast news.

So the Justice said—but let the word go forth to the nations! At that point, she encountered what some may view as a somewhat peculiar question:

BAIER (continuing directly): Right. And the 22nd Amendment says you can only run for office for two terms.

BARRETT: True.

BAIER: You think that that’s cut and dry?

There's no such thing as a stupid question, Teacher always said. But to our ear, that question from Baier did seem to be a bit odd.

Can a president run for more than two terms? The anchor's inquiring mind wanted to know! 

Was Justice Barrett surprised by the question? Watching the tape, you can decide—bit here's what she said in reply:

BARRETT (continuing directly): Well, you know, that’s what the amendment says, right? You know, after FDR had four terms, that’s what that amendment says.

Baier moved on from there.

For the record, FDR died in April 1945. He actually served less than three months of his fourth term.

Still, he had run and won four times. The 22nd amendment was a reaction to that. Many people will think that Justice Barrett described what the amendment actually says—but maybe you never quite know!

Why in the world did Baier ask that particular question? We can't read the gentleman's mind, but now we turn to what Cleta Mitchell has recently said.

Who the heck is Cleta Matchell? She used to be a contender! In fact, she's been a key insider for quite a long time. The good book says this about that:

Cleta Mitchell

Cleta B. Deatherage Mitchell (born September 16, 1950) is an American lawyer, former politician, and Republican elections activist. Elected in 1976, Mitchell served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives until 1984, representing District 44 as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1996, she registered as a Republican. Since then, she has worked as a Republican lawyer and activist focused on elections, asserting, without evidence, that Democrats win elections only by cheating.

After Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Mitchell aided Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the election results and pressure election officials to "find" sufficient votes for him to win. After participating in a telephone call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to alter the election results in Georgia (which was won by Biden), Mitchell resigned as a partner at Foley & Lardner. In 2021, she set up an escrow fund to funnel money to companies conducting a pro-Trump "audit" into Arizona's 2020 election. 

[...]

She has served as legal counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Rifle Association of America. She has represented Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK).

She is on the boards of numerous conservative organizations, including the Bradley Foundation which has given $6.5 million to Project Veritas, the National Rifle Association (NRA) (where she has also been a lawyer), and the Republican National Lawyers Association, of which she is a former president. As a board member of the American Conservative Union (ACU), Mitchell played a major role in efforts to expel GOProud (a pro-gay rights Republican group) from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a major annual right-wing convention organized by the ACU...

And so on from there. She started out as a Democrat, but given how way leads on to way, she became a highly placed Republican of the highly "conservative" kind. 

Mitchell has long been a very big deal. She was even part of President Trump's famous phone call to Georgia in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Today, Mitchell isn't exactly "back in the news," but she possibly should be. 

We turn again to Mediaite for a bit of slightly peculiar news. Last Tuesday, Mitchell appeared on the little-known podcast, Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.

Michael Luciano reports:

Lawyer Who Helped Trump Try To Overturn Election Says He May Use ‘Emergency Powers’ To Take Control of Elections

A lawyer who helped President Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 election claimed the president can “exercise some emergency powers” to wield authority over elections, which are a state matter.

[...]

Last week, she appeared on Washington Watch, where she vaguely claimed that Trump could invoke emergency powers to take control of elections.

“The president’s authority is limited,” Mitchell said. “The chief executive is limited in his role with regard to elections, except that where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States, as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have, then I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.”

Mitchell seems to have spotted another threat to national sovereignty! Meanwhile, say what?

In response to that threat, the sitting president may be "thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward?” That's what Mitchell said! 

To see the full hour of Washington Watch, you can just click here. At this site, we would pair Mitchell's fuzzy claim with Baier's unusual question.

Within Blue America, it's no longer unusual to see observers suggest that midterm elections may not even happen next year. Meanwhile, Baier could only have had the current president in mind when he inquired about a possible third term.

Until recently, such thoughts and speculation would have been very much "not normal." That said, what's abnormal within a more recent time frame may turn out to be extremely normal within the vast sweep of human history.

We may revisit the Scythians tomorrow. Once again, here's what the good book says:

Scythians

The Scythians or Scyths, also known as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, where they remained until the 3rd century BC.

Skilled in mounted warfare, the Scythians displaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BC. In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and often raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians.

In the 6th century BC, they were expelled from West Asia by the Medes, and retreated back into the Pontic Steppe, and were later conquered by the Sarmatians in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC. By the 3rd century AD, last remnants of the Scythians were overwhelmed by the Goths..

The Scythians swept in from Central Asia. Thanks to their skill in mounted warfare. they became the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe. 

Eventually, they were conquered by the Sarmatians, then were overwhelmed by the Goths. In the annals of human history, it happens all the time.

We think of the fictional Carlotta Valdes in the face of such facts. She's the dreamy fictional figure who seems to hypnotically journey back through time, recalling all the deaths and all the conquests, in Hitchcock's famous film, Vertigo.

Human tribes have been overwhelming other tribes since the dawn of time. If we view human life through a longer lens, what seems to be "not normal" today may turn out to be quite normal.

Certain behaviors and longings may perhaps be bred in the bone, certain top experts have said. Conventional niceties may go away when the longing for conquest appears.

Bret Baier posed an unusual question. Cleta Mitchell gave voice to a rather "not normal" idea.

Is Blue America facing a "night assault?" We've asked, but you can decide.

Tomorrow: As normal as command of the steppe