Tag: Merrick Garland

Trump Stolen Document Drama: Even Split on Responsibility

An inexplicable delay: what really happened here?

Who’s to blame for Donald Trump having a horde of classified documents including Top Secret and Top Secret compartmentalized (a narrower category than mere Top Secret) at Mar-a-Lago for 18 months?

Well Donald Trump obviously. But he had plenty of help, starting with the people who elected him President in the first place, and even more the large segment of them who took to worshiping him to the degree that he really began to believe in his own godlike status–not bound by the  rules and laws by which all American citizens, including the top office-holder, are bound in principle. Next layer above voters consists of Republican politicians, primarily hypocrites who felt it was necessary to support Trump publicly for the sake of their political skins (and given the violence of Trump’s True Believers, perhaps their literal skins) even when they were well aware of his wrongdoing. The layer closest to Trump comprised members of his administration, most notably Bill Barr as Attorney General, who sank the Mueller investigation, and even launched a counter-investigation led by John Durham—a counter-investigation which basically in three years turned up nothing corrupt about the Mueller team. Bill Barr, first fired by Trump for dismissing Trump’s fraudulent charges of election fraud that cost him the 2020 election, and now horrified by the trove of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, has withdrawn his support of Trump . . . a bit late to curtail much of the enormous damage the ex-Prez has done to the country. (Done even if he hadn’t taken all those documents.)

We could go on naming enablers and Trump cult members on the Right,  lawyers with preposterous claims about the 2020 election, and other lawyers who knew the facts but nevertheless created a legal cocoon around the ex-President, but you already know most of them, if not by specific names then the groups to which they belong.

Enough rightward finger-pointing.  Let’s try some
more targeted finger pointing.

At this point, it’s evident that half the blame belongs to the parties named above.

The other half belongs to the Biden administration, in particular Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Continue reading “Trump Stolen Document Drama: Even Split on Responsibility”

Civility on the Chopping Block: Why Democrats Lose

What Mitch McConnell’s Total War Tells Us

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no qualms about squashing the Democrat Party’s attempt to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court, any more than he had qualms about refusing to allow Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland even to be heard in committee a year ago.  The Garland episode was abundantly unfair. Certainly Mitch McConnell in his heart of hearts knew that to be so.

But Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about fairness. Just as with his categorically obstructionist policy regarding all things Obamain, fairness was the farthest thing from his mind.  All’s fair in love and war is the axiom by which he and his fellow Republicans operate. Whatever we may think about McConnell’s ugly enough racial and personal biases against the former President, the key deciding factor that animated his obstructionism was the challenge to Business as Usual represented by the upstart senator Obama. . . and it had to be crushed at all costs.

Continue reading “Civility on the Chopping Block: Why Democrats Lose”