1. The Democrats take great pains to distinguish BLM violence from the Capitol riot.

2. They’ve increasingly turned to a political lexicon about “democracy” and “democratic institutions” that has no basis in law, but that is being legislated through the media, press releases, and from the bench. One Capitol rioter had bail denied on account of attacking democratic institutions.

America is not a “democracy” and the Democrats have taken great care to demonstrate that the will of the people doesn’t and shouldn’t matter in any event. 

What the constant invocation of “democracy” really means is that disrupting Democratic agendas is sedition and insurrection while Democrat riots are okay because they’re expressions of democracy. Like their European counterparts, when Democrats say democracy, they mean social democracy.

3. Merrick Garland, at his hearing, invoked the very bad “democratic institutions” exception to argue that the attacks on the Portland courthouse were less of an issue.

“Let me ask you about assaults on federal property in places other than Washington, D.C. Portland, for instance,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said. “Do you regard assaults on federal courthouses or other federal properties as acts of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism?”

Garland said his personal view on the matter lined up with the statutory definition of terrorism.

“My own definition, which is about the same as the statutory definition, is the use of violence or threats of violence in an attempt to disrupt democratic processes,” Garland replied. “So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is domestic extremism, domestic terrorism.”

But Garland drew a distinction between an attack on a government property at night and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Both are criminal but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions,” Garland added.

Obviously, attacking a courthouse prevents it from functioning, no matter what time of day the attack is carried out. And, had Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building at night, would it somehow not have been domestic terrorism? 

Furthermore, the courthouse was also shut down at least once due to bomb threats.

The idea that domestic terrorism has to involve disrupting “democratic institutions” is creepy Communist nonsense. An Islamic terrorist running over foreign tourists in New York City is still domestic terrorism. The whole “democratic institutions” clause turns the government into the only possible victim of terrorism.

And the only part of government that can be a victim is that part which is engaged in democratic or Democratic behavior.

Meanwhile, after some 100 nights of Black Lives Matter rioting, $2.3 million in damages have been inflicted on the courthouse. And here’s what life was like inside it.

“It’s scary. You open those doors out, when the crowd is shaking the fence, and … on the other side of that fence are people that want to kill you because of the job we chose to do and what we represent,” said a Deputy U.S. Marshal who has been protecting the courthouse for weeks. He requested anonymity because protesters have identified him and posted his personal information online.

“I can’t walk outside without being in fear for my life,” he said. “I am worried for my life, every time I walk outside of the building.”

Small pods of three to four protesters dressed in black circulated in the crowd, stopping every few minutes to point green laser beams in the eyes of agents posted as lookouts on porticoes on the courthouse’s upper stories. The agents above were silhouetted against the dark sky as dozens of green laser dots and a large spotlight played on the courthouse walls, projected from the back of the crowd.

Without lights, the agents hoped they would be better protected from people in the crowd who were firing metal ball bearings through the windows with sling shots. Thick ribbons of green light from blinding lasers crisscrossed the courthouse lobby, forcing the agents who were resting in between deployments to the fence to duck and weave to protect their eyes.

Thirty minutes later, someone fired a commercial-grade firework inside the fence. Next came a flare and then protesters began using an angle grinder to eat away at the fence. A barrage of items came whizzing into the courthouse: rocks, cans of beans, water bottles, potatoes and rubber bouncy balls that cause the agents to slip and fall.

“You see a lot of commentary on social media about, ‘Well, they’re wearing protective gear so that it’s not going to hurt them.’ Okay, I’ll put the same protective gear on you and I’ll throw a brick at your head and you tell me if you feel comfortable with that,” said a senior U.S. Marshals Service official who’s overseeing the response in Portland.

The firework came whizzing over the fence so fast that the agent didn’t have time to move.

It exploded with a boom, leaving his hearing deadened and bloody gashes on both forearms. Stunned, with help from his cohorts, he stripped to his boxer shorts and a black T-shirt so his wounds could be examined and photographed for evidence.

He told his fellow agents he was more worried about his hearing than about the gouges and burns on his arms.

By the end of the night, five other federal agents would be injured, including another who got a concussion when he was hit in the head with a commercial-grade firework. One agent was hospitalized. Several agents have lingering vision problems from the lasers.

This really was a case where the prior administration should have faced down the mob and the media, and deployed the military without apologies. Instead, the BLM mobs were able to keep doing this and their Democrat allies were still able to deploy the military and occupy Washington D.C.

Portland was a war zone and now Biden’s pick is making it clear that BLM violence and violence from the Right will be treated very differently based on whether he decides that they comprise an attack on “core democratic institutions”.