Tag: William Barr

Fake Fears, Legit Fears . . . and Fears of the Undefinable

Happy? Thanksgiving?

Yes, it’s still a beautiful world in  many respects.  So as we head into the holidays with visions of impeachments dancing in our heads, let us rejoice that: we are not in a nuclear war; Donald Trump has not assumed dictatorial powers; William Barr is about to resign in disgrace;* Adam Schiff has not been assassinated (as of this writing); Russia has not annexed the whole of Ukraine; New York City is still above sea level; more than a dozen elephants remain in the wild;  Ruth Bader Ginsburg lives on; and Artificial Intelligence has still not determined that it’s worth taking over this messy, irrational, bigotry-infested world. 

You have much to be thankful for. You can be thankful that, despite much Fox News/National Enquirer-generated fake news, we do not have on our southern border hordes of raping, thieving, murderous people  itching to invade the U.S. and take away our jobs; Ukraine is not hacking our elections although Russia has and is; a non-negligible number of Americans actually understand the value of the rule of law; wind turbines do not cause cancer;  the mainstream media are not Enemies of the People; vaccines do not cause autism; Hillary Clinton is not running a child sex ring; a majority of Americans actually do believe that guns kill people; George Soros has no plan to undermine the American political system.

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It’s Now or Never: Delay on Impeachment Weakens Democrats

Time’s running out for impeachment

The argument against impeaching Donald Trump gets stronger every day.  Check out liberal pundit Nathan Robinson giving pro-impeachment liberals a scolding in the pages  of The Guardian. Robinson is wrong that impeachment of Trump is a bad idea. But he’s right that counting on Mueller’s congressional testimony to turn public opinion in favor of impeachment was foolish.  Polls still find support for impeachment below 40 percent among the general population, although above 60 percent among Democrats.  Mueller’s testimony didn’t change many minds on either side of the partisan divide, and the center has seemed not to care very much before, during, and after.

In making the case against impeachment, Robinson trots out the  tiresome argument that “the Democratic obsession with the Mueller investigation was symptomatic of a party that has lost touch with the real concerns of working people.” Again, Robinson is both wrong and right.  Wrong that the party has lost touch with the real concerns of working people.  (He knows better—he’s just venting.) But he’s correct that the hype of the Mueller report—primarily on the Left—has given the appearance of a party that has lost touch. That’s not the fault of the Democratic Party, it’s the fault of the media that thrive on whipping up emotions. Their best bet for ratings has been to run juicy Trump-outrage stories to get the liberal tribe thirsting for blood.

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Cannot Indict a – What?

“Impermissible” – You Gotta Be Kidding Me

Key to Attorney General William Barr’s prevarications about the culpability of Donald Trump, is the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC’s) official policy that the indictment of a sitting president is “impermissible” because it would “unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”

How does that square, Mr. Barr, with Donald Trump’s boast in January 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Times Square and shoot somebody and not lose any voters?”

Trump apologists will say the latter was merely a comic metaphor just to illustrate the utter loyalty of Trump voters. He “didn’t really mean it.”

But what was it he didn’t really mean? Just the shooting part, or the idea  that his followers absolutely believed he was above the law? Or the implication that, if he acquired enough loyal followers, that he really would be above the law?

Continue reading “Cannot Indict a – What?”