[Sonar21] The midnight brawl at Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal is not a Polish problem. It is the local flare-up of a continental disease. Across Europe, when voters pick the wrong candidate, the establishment reaches for a judge, an intelligence service or the EU’s checkbook, and calls the result "defending democracy." The Journal of Democracy wrote the textbook. Warsaw is the teaching hospital.
In December 2023, two months after Donald Tusk’s coalition pushed Law and Justice (PiS) out of power, Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura of Kultura Liberalna published a how-to guide in the Journal of Democracy. The title says it all: "How to Dismantle an Illiberal Democracy."
Consider the provenance. At the time, the Journal was the flagship publication of the National Endowment for Democracy, the outfit that does in daylight what the CIA used to do at night. It split from NED this year after DOGE cut off NED’s funding in 2025, and it is now independent and partnered with Stanford’s CDDRL. In 2023, though, this was the democracy-promotion establishment telling Warsaw how to clean house.
The argument, stripped of its footnotes:
Poland needs a "second wave" of transitional justice to deal with PiS "violations of the rule of law."
Avoid vague treason charges. Prosecute specific acts: the 2015 Constitutional Tribunal appointments, the 2020 attempt at an all-mail presidential election and the 2023 visa-for-cash scandal.
Jarosław Kaczyński bears responsibility but will be hard to convict.
Parliamentary investigative committees are the main tool.
Expect resistance from the PiS-aligned presidency, Supreme Court and State Tribunal.
Stabilize the system without breaking it.
The authors close with a disclaimer worth framing: "There is no clear roadmap... One should therefore not expect miracles."
The critique
The defenders of democracy have written a manual for dismantling one. They don’t see the irony, and that is the most instructive thing about the essay.
Start with the word "illiberal." It is not a legal category. It is a label handed out by people with conference budgets to governments they dislike. PiS won the 2015 and 2019 parliamentary elections outright. Yet the article treats its officials less like a defeated party and more like the communist nomenklatura of 1989, in need of a "transitional justice" process.
In fairness to Kuisz and Wigura, they are more careful than their cause. They warn against show trials and vague charges, and they admit nobody knows how to do this. But manuals are not read for their caveats. Politicians skip the footnotes and go straight to the chapter on tools.
Here is the core contradiction. PiS stands accused of capturing the courts, ignoring rulings and stacking institutions with loyalists. The cure prescribed is to purge the courts, ignore rulings and install the right loyalists. The sin becomes a sacrament when the right people commit it.
Poland, three years later: the manual in action
This week the manual left the library and went to the streets of Warsaw, escorted by riot police.
Since 2023, Tusk’s government has refused to recognize the Constitutional Tribunal and has ignored its rulings. Starting in March, parliament elected eight new judges. President Karol Nawrocki refused to swear in five of them. They held their own oath ceremony and mailed the oaths to the presidential palace, which is a new one even by Central European standards....
On NATO, a caveat. Domestic turmoil makes an offensive or expeditionary venture far less likely, but it does not mean these countries would refuse to defend their own territory. Both camps in Warsaw back heavy defense spending, and a direct attack on a member tends to unite even the most divided parliament. My argument is about appetite for adventure, not the willingness to fight at the border.
None of these caveats changes the central point. The fight in Warsaw isn’t really about judges. It is about whether a European nation may still define itself, or whether that right now belongs to Brussels, NED and the people who write manuals on dismantling democracies. Moscow got that answer years ago. Warsaw is getting it now.
[NY Post] Haley Stevens is a "proud Democrat" who bashed GOP candidate Mike Rogers just this past summer.
So think about how bad Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed must be for Stevens to cross the political aisle and endorse Rogers, the Republican candidate she initially dismissed, for senator from Michigan.
So bad that El-Sayed dismissed an attack on a synagogue full of children by blaming Israel, claiming that "hurt people hurt people."
So bad that when El-Sayed was asked whether Iran or Israel was the greater threat to the US, he answered both.
So bad that El-Sayed refused to denounce an advertisement that blamed Israel for high inflation.
Stevens had begged for El-Sayed to stop blaming the Jewish state for everything wrong in this world, and El-Sayed refused.
So Stevens did the only sensible thing: She is backing Rogers on the eve of Tuesday’s election, warning Michigan and the nation of the dangers posed by Abdul El-Sayed.
The progressives are already screaming, declaring her a "traitor." But this is not a betrayal. It is a singular act of courage.
Stevens has nothing to gain here. The Democratic machine, which prioritizes winning over morals, will disown her. She’s not looking for a future as a Republican. There is no money, no glory in this. There is only principle.
Haley Stevens hasn’t changed, the party has changed, beholden now to the deranged "Free Palestine" antisemitic mob that cheers the terror of Hamas. She’s tried cautioning the Democrats. She’s tried convincing them. In the end, she came to the realization that so many Jewish-Americans have, to their sadness: The party has abandoned them.
Hopefully her bravery will make a difference with voters this Election Day. Heed her warning.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/02/2026 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Sonar21] The midnight brawl at Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal is not a Polish problem. It is the local flare-up of a continental disease. Across Europe, when voters pick the wrong candidate, the establishment reaches for a judge, an intelligence service or the EU’s checkbook, and calls the result "defending democracy." The Journal of Democracy wrote the textbook. Warsaw is the teaching hospital.
