Hanoi Jane Fonda will, in effect, ride her anti-aircraft gun photo straight through the Democrat presidential campaign tomorrow.
“Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is set to join Fonda at a Saturday virtual event held by progressive advocacy group Supermajority. The event—titled “Supercharge: Women All In”—will “bring together thousands of women to laugh, sing, dance, and celebrate women’s political power,” according to the group’s website.” (Washington Free Beacon, Sept. 23, 2020)
Included in this anti-vet, anti-American event celebrating “women’s political power” is a “yelling room where participants are encouraged to scream out their emotions,” according to event organizers.
Screaming out their emotions is what innumerable leftist women are prone to do, as witnessed in many Tweets and YouTubes since mob rule took over city streets. (See Below)
Imagine the one and the same Biden campaign, which has smeared President Donald Trump with false accusations about his lack of respect for U.S. soldiers, will be out there campaigning this weekend with Jane Fonda—a celebrity best known for fraternizing with enemy troops during the Vietnam War!
“Fonda traveled to North Vietnam in 1972 as part of an anti-war protest that saw her pose for photos with enemy troops on an anti-aircraft gun. The photo sparked outrage among Vietnam veterans, earning her the nickname “Hanoi Jane.” Fonda’s public appearances remain subject to controversy—a group of Ohio veterans called on the actress to donate her $83,000 speaking fee to the families of fallen soldiers ahead of a May appearance at Kent State University. (Washington Free Beacon)
“Harris and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have criticized President Donald Trump on veterans’ issues in recent weeks. During a September “veterans roundtable,” Biden criticized Trump for ignoring “the bounty on the heads of Americans in Afghanistan,” referencing a slew of June reports that claimed Russia bribed the Taliban to kill U.S. servicemen. One day before the roundtable, Marine Corps general Frank McKenzie—who oversees military operations in the region—told NBC News that a review of U.S. intelligence failed to corroborate the alleged bounties.
Fonda’s financial help to Sen. Harris speaks much louder than Harris’ signature Clintonesque giggle:
“Fonda has long supported Harris financially, contributing nearly $6,000 to the Democrat’s Senate campaign since 2016. The actress also gave $1,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in June after donating a combined $10,300 to Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), Democratic governors Steve Bullock (Mont.) and Jay Inslee (Wash.), and billionaire Tom Steyer during the presidential primary. (Washington Free Beacon)
“Saturday’s event will also be attended by Warren, twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). Supermajority was launched in 2019 by a group of progressive activists, including former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza. The group has raised $2.5 million in 2020, with $2 million coming from liberal billionaire George Soros’s Democracy PAC.
“Supermajority aims to train and mobilize “a community of all ages, races, and backgrounds to fight for gender equality together,” according to its website.
“Fonda in 2017 said she does not regret her trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War but does regret the infamous photo with North Vietnamese troops. She added that while she is not “proud of America today,” she is “proud of the resistance.”
“I’m proud of the people who are turning out in unprecedented numbers and continue over and over again to protest what Trump is doing. I’m very proud of them, that core,” Fonda said.
In her promotion of the roundtable in a tweet, the hypocrisy of Harris on respect for fallen soldiers and war vets is jaw-dropping:
“American veterans sacrifice so much for our nation and deserve our respect and gratitude, both while on active duty and after.”
Maybe she’ll wear her Timberland boots in her ‘yell room’ screech with Jane Fonda tomorrow.
Cultural Marxism is the gradual process of grinding down western democracies by subverting the pillars of their culture, the structures and institutions of family, religion, education, politics, law, the arts and the media, as they provide the social cohesion necessary to a functioning society. Undermine the principles these structural institutions embody, and a capitalist society can be overthrown from within without firing a shot. Like termites eating away at the foundation of a house, cultural Marxists in our midst have plotted since the 1960s to radically transform every cultural institution in America, including its secondary education system.
Those who think the threat of communism ended when the Soviet Union collapsed would be shocked to know what’s being taught decades later in many of America’s schools. In “Bill Ayers, the Critical Pedagogy Movement and Cultural Marxism,” author Geoffrey Brittain wrote this:
In many of our public schools, young, impressionable children are no longer being taught to feel good about being Americans. Their school teachers, who traditionally embody socially approved values, are teaching them to be ashamed of being Americans. Spreading out from the schools that teach our teachers, this ideology is being inculcated into our nation’s K-12 schools and is anti-American in the most profound meaning of the term. It is a movement that is teaching future generations that capitalism and traditional American values are intrinsically evil. Critical pedagogy and its advocates, in their vehement antipathy toward capitalism, private property and traditional American values, is a classic fifth subversive column, no less dangerous to freedom than communism. Its advocates are seeking to radically transform our society by covertly indoctrinating the young through an essentially clandestine and subversive transformation of its culture.
What follows are examples of how cultural Marxists in our schools are indoctrinating the young.
Caught on tape: Union teachers discuss pushing communism in the classroom
During a meeting of the Left Forum, two public school teachers were caught on video discussing how to slip communist dogma into classrooms. Wearing a “Tax the Rich” shirt, Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles high school teacher and teachers union activist who contributes to “The Socialist Review,” and Megan Behrent, a New York City public school teacher affiliated with the International Socialist Organization, participated in a panel discussion about injecting Marxism into classroom instruction.
6th grade lesson plan: Design a flag for a new socialist nation
Across America, activist teachers, nearly all of whom vote Democrat, are pushing communist doctrine on captive young minds, often with the tacit approval of Democrat school administers, Democrat-controlled school boards and the modern Democratic Party.
A progressive-designed lesson plan for 6th graders in Texas public schools read as follows:
Note that socialist/communist nations use symbolism on their flags representing various aspects of their economic system. Imagine a new socialist nation is creating a flag and you have been put in charge. Use symbolism to represent aspects of socialism/communism on your flag. What kind of symbolism/colors would you use?
If this type of thing is taught in a red state like Texas, the odds are off the charts that communist-themed lesson plans are also being used in other states.
6th grade teacher: “Republicans don’t care about anyone but the rich.”
After telling her 6th grade class that Republicans are stupid, Virginia public school teacher Kristin Martin went on to say that Republicans “don’t care about anyone but wealthy people and businesses,” an absurd claim designed to infect her students with Marxist class resentment. Martin made her comments on Mar. 6, 2012 as Republicans filed into Powell Elementary School in Fairfax to vote on Super Tuesday.
Virginia 3rd graders required to perform Occupy Wall Street song
During an official event at an elementary school in Virginia, 3rd grade students were required to perform “Part of the 99%,’ a song with an unmistakable political overtone: support of the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street protests. In response to an outburst of criticism, school board officials defended the song, saying the district’s schools don’t censor songs children write or try to influence the subjects children write songs about. “It all came out of the kids’ own mouths and the kids’ own words,” said Albemarle County school board chair, Steve Koleszar. Does it appear the song was written by 3rd graders? You decide:
Part of the 99%
Some people have it all
But they still don’t think they have enough
They want more money, a faster ride
They’re not content, never satisfied
Yes, they’re the 1%
I used to be one of the 1%
I worked all the time, never saw my family
Couldn’t make life rhyme, then the bubble burst
It really, really hurt
I lost my money, lost my pride, lost my home
Now I’m one of the 99%
The song accomplished its decidedly anti-American purpose: planting the seeds of Marxist class hatred in the minds of 8-year-olds.
Using Legos to teach communism
Two teachers at a Seattle school banned Legos from the classroom to teach kindergarteners about the alleged evils of private property. Anxious to have the toys returned to the classroom, the children agreed to a new set of guidelines set by their teachers, including these: All structures must be public structures and all structures must be standard size. Later, the teachers proudly quoted their newly indoctrinated students:
• “A house is good because it is a community house.”
• “We should all have equal houses.”
• “It’s important to have the same power over your building as other people.”
What the 5-year-olds were taught is explained in this Karl Marx quote: “The theory of Communism can be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”
Students at Florida college show signs of prior Marxist indoctrination
Valencia College economics professor Jack Chambliss asked his sophomore class two questions on an essay assignment: what does the American Dream look like to you, and how much do you expect the federal government to help you achieve that vision? Eighty percent of his students expect government to provide one or more of the following:
Police officers have become the targets of violent activists who are seeking to upend America as we know it. Heather Mac Donald, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The War on Cops, is in the studio this week to break down the myths behind “systemic racism” and “police brutality.” Subscribe so you never miss a new episode! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/series/candace/
Finally, the United States has a president courageous enough to see through the empty rhetoric of such phony multilateralism and tell China and the rest of the world the truths they do not want to hear
The United Nations’ annual General Assembly high level debate week is usually a very big deal on the diplomatic calendar. World leaders assemble in New York with their entourages, deliver their perspectives on the state of the world in long-winded speeches, and conduct numerous conferences and bilateral side meetings on a variety of global issues. Of course, the world leaders are also busy attending a multitude of fancy receptions. This year, however, is very different due to the coronavirus pandemic. The UN headquarters building is eerily quiet. There are no foreign dignitaries to be seen. Speeches by heads of state and heads of government are being delivered via prerecorded videos. Although President Trump could have delivered his speech in person, he opted not to make the trip to New York and speak in front of a few UN ambassadors in a virtually empty General Assembly chamber. But President Trump nevertheless delivered via video his usual tour de force.
President Trump wasted no time holding China responsible for the global spread of the coronavirus
President Trump wasted no time holding China responsible for the global spread of the coronavirus. “We have waged a fierce battle against the invisible enemy — the China virus — which has claimed countless lives in 188 countries,” President Trump said. The United Nations “must hold China accountable.” He noted how China had criticized his restrictions on travel from China even though China had “locked down travel domestically while allowing flights to leave China and infect the world.” The president then recounted his administration’s unprecedented mobilization of resources to defeat the virus, including the progress being made to develop potential vaccines. “We will distribute a vaccine, we will defeat the virus, we will end the pandemic, and we will enter a new era of unprecedented prosperity, cooperation and peace,” he declared.
President Trump also took China to task for its record on the environment and its hypocrisy regarding its participation in the “one-sided” Paris Agreement on climate change from which the United States has withdrawn. China, he said, has dumped millions and millions of tons of plastic and trash into the ocean. It “emits more toxic mercury into the atmosphere than any country anywhere in the world.” President Trump added that “China’s carbon emissions are nearly twice what the U.S. has, and it’s rising fast.”
The U.S. president challenged the UN to remain relevant in dealing with the many problems besetting the world today. “If the United Nations is to be an effective organization, it must focus on the real problems of the world,” he said. “This includes terrorism, the oppression of women, forced labor, drug trafficking, human and sex trafficking, religious persecution, and the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities.”
President Trump extolled America’s economic and international security leadership in pursuing peace with strength. He also pointed to the historic agreements his administration brokered between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain, as well as one between Kosovo and Serbia. Inexplicably, the UN’s Secretary General Antonio Guterres made no mention of these agreements in the remarks he delivered in person before President Trump’s speech.
China’s press statement is an exercise in blame-shifting, deception, and fictional narratives.
“By taking a different approach, we have achieved different outcomes — far superior outcomes,” President Trump said. He predicted “more peace agreements shortly.”
As President Trump has done in the past, he explained that putting one’s own country first is not incompatible with multilateral cooperation. In fact, they reinforce each other. He said that “only when you take care of your own citizens will you find a true basis for cooperation.” He concluded his speech asking for God’s blessing for America and the United Nations.
China did not take long to release a rebuttal press statement accusing the United States of “spreading political virus.” China’s press statement is an exercise in blame-shifting, deception, and fictional narratives.
The press statement charged that the United States was “abusing the platform of the United Nations to provoke confrontation and create division,” adding that “the United States is weakening the UN, the WHO and other UN bodies, and undermining the authority and effectiveness of the UN.” The press release then defended China’s indefensible record on dealing with the coronavirus. It made the false claim that “China, with an open, transparent, and responsible attitude, has been giving updates and sharing experience with the WHO and other countries from the very beginning and providing active assistance to many countries, including the United States.” What a bunch of hogwash!
China’s President H.E. Xi Jinping’s speech, which followed shortly after President Trump’s remarks, was also prerecorded. While President Xi did not himself have the opportunity to reply in real time to President Trump’s extensive criticisms of China’s behavior, he obviously anticipated what President Trump would have to say about the coronavirus. Taking a not too subtle dig at President Trump’s frequent labeling of the coronavirus as the “China virus” and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, President Xi declared: “We should follow the guidance of science, give full play to the leading role of the World Health Organization, and launch a joint international response to beat this pandemic. Any attempt of politicizing the issue or stigmatization must be rejected.”
President Xi urged the world to “uphold the multilateral trading regime with the World Trade Organization as the cornerstone
President Xi tried to portray China as the leader of multilateralism in dealing with the virus, ignoring the indisputable evidence of the Chinese regime’s refusal to make full disclosure of what it knew early on about the highly contagious nature of the virus’s human-to-human transmission. “China is actively involved in the international fight against COVID-19, contributing its share to upholding global public health security,” President Xi said with a straight face.
“COVID-19 reminds us that we are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake,” President Xi added. “No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles.”
Is that why the Communist China regime hid the truth about the coronavirus from the world when the virus could have been contained, hoarded medical supplies such as face masks and surgical gowns and gloves imported from countries abroad to meet its own immediate needs, and then sold the supplies back to those countries at inflated prices after they became Covid-19 infected? President Xi’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.
President Xi urged the world to “uphold the multilateral trading regime with the World Trade Organization as the cornerstone.” Only so long as his regime can continue bilking the world on its way to prosperity by manipulating the global trading system and stealing intellectual property, will President Xi, in his words, “stay true to multilateralism and safeguard the international system with the UN at its core.”
Finally, the United States has a president courageous enough to see through the empty rhetoric of such phony multilateralism and tell China and the rest of the world the truths they do not want to hear.
Marxist-trained anarchists, the Antifa Blackshirts, and the BLM terrorists are intent on causing fear, intimidation, and panic, in the populace in order to hinder those seeking to maintain fair elections
On the third evening of the Republican National Convention, Vice President Mike Pence gave an eloquent acceptance speech at Fort McHenry. The voices on the Left offered a lot of disdain that he gave his speech at the historic site. Protestors and supporters both showed up in Baltimore and voiced their respective opinions without violence. However, in some cases they were directly across the street from one another. Yet, the local ABC news affiliate in Baltimore concentrated most of its reporting on what appears on the surface as a Marxist front group called the “People’s Power Assembly.”
“And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation! Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n “rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
“The Defence of Fort McHenry”
Apparently, that convention night the “People’s Power Assembly” organized a car caravan to drive by Fort McHenry. Sharon Black explained that “We haven’t forgotten the racism of Trump when he said our city was rat infested and insulted Congressman Cummings.” Black is an organizer with “Peoples Power Assembly,” and clarified that “Today with Pence coming into town, we’re saying get out of town.” But, what the Left had a major problem with, consciously or unconsciously, is that Fort McHenry was the subject of a poem written by Francis Scott Key, which was titled aptly enough “The Defence of Fort McHenry.” The main problem is that the words of that poem have become the center of an incredible divisive controversy—they reference trust in God.
The words of Key’s poem were put to music not long after he wrote the poem, and it became a very popular song in the fledgling United States in the early 1800s. In fact, the song became so popular that it became America’s National Anthem. And, as the political conventions were completed, the NFL season began again. But Key’s song has become the eye of the storm in the realm of politicized sports—as if sports weren’t competitive or divisive enough already. Politics contorts competition into a whole new level. And, as the football season began this year, there was an incredible irony hovering over America.
Patriot Day had been remembered the previous week, as American citizens paid respect to true heroes on 9/11. And, less than a week later the nation celebrated Constitution Day. But, one day that may have been missed in the blur of events of the past week was the anniversary of the birth of the National Anthem. Francis Scott Key penned “The Defence of Fort McHenry” after he became genuinely moved that the U.S. flag was still flying over the fort protecting Baltimore after a 25-hour bombardment from a British fleet during the War of 1812. The bombardment began in earnest at 6:30 a.m., on September 13, 1814. It is estimated that between 1,500 and 1,800 cast-iron bomb shells were fired at the walls of Fort McHenry.
The future of our nation is on the line in this time as much, or even more than it was on the line in 1814
The bombardment was a display of sheer British naval superiority and the defiance of the motley American band in the fort was overtly obvious to any observers—even to the British. It was an unexpected outcome because the British military had basically wiped the American forces out—they burned the city of Washington, D.C., took control of the nation’s capital for nearly a month. The British attempt to take control of Baltimore did end in frustration even though they were by far the superior military force. The British bomber ships were named to strike terror as well as inflict serious damage. They had such formidable names such as HMS Devastation, or HMS Volcano or HMS Terror.
The leader defending the fort, Major George Armistead, had ordered the creation of a huge U.S. flag which he hoped could be seen clearly by any attacking forces. This huge 30’ x 42’ flag was what attorney Francis Scott Key saw that morning of September 14, 1814. It was a symbol of defiance in the face of extreme danger. Key was present to simply help free his friend, elderly Dr. William Beanes, who was being held as a prisoner by the British because he had confronted three of Her Majesty’s soldiers. One old man being defiant in the face of intimidation was why Key was even present in the moment, and then he witnessed the defiance of those patriots inside Fort McHenry.
MSM, are essentially fanning flames of disunity and division for the sake of tearing the nation down
The U.S. almost lost the War of 1812, but the defense of Fort McHenry, even though it simply meant that there would be no American surrender, was one of the high points in the war. It represented a moment in which “no surrender” under such intense attacks was a victory in and of itself. Thus Key was so moved to write his poem. Was his intent a racist rant? It is highly doubtful, but Marxists who spew that it is, do not even believe their own words much of the time. If the mantra can confuse or shame enough people to abandon their values, then half of the battle is won.
The example of defending Fort McHenry in September of 1814, provides a lesson for patriots today. Vice President Pence chose the ground well in which he would deliver his acceptance speech for the GOP’s nomination. He knows the history, and he realizes the political battles and what is at stake in the election of 2020. The spirit of the moment was captured, and the memory of such resolve is within Vice President Pence and even more so in President Trump. The future of our nation is on the line in this time as much, or even more than it was on the line in 1814. Yet, the nation prevailed despite all odds.
Regardless of how the mainstream media are portraying reality in this election year, it must be taken with clear discernment for the propaganda being perpetuated by the MSM. The MSM is promoting football players, or those in other sports, who choose to take a knee and visibly disrespect our flag and covering those burning the flag. This institution is fomenting rebelliousness and supporting terrorism. It is incredibly wrong. From one vantage point, such efforts made by the MSM, are essentially fanning flames of disunity and division for the sake of tearing the nation down. The domestic enemy is in our midst, just as the enemy of America was in the presence of the colonists on a daily basis.
Marxist-trained anarchists, the Antifa Blackshirts, and the BLM terrorists are intent on causing fear, intimidation, and panic
One example is the attempt of progressive-revisionist historians who seek to provide their own politically-biased narrative regarding the intent of Francis Scott Key’s words, the words of the Marxist-based progressives are empty words rooted in resentment. The flag has always represented the people of America—even dissenters—the genuine symbol of the struggle of a determined people to be free. Even before the creation of the government, the design of the flag was recognized as a symbol of the unity of the people in their desperate fight for freedom. The government that would be formalized much later owed its existence to brave and brilliant people. Key’s words about the flag were a tribute to the resolve of free men to preserve their freedom.
Marxist-trained anarchists, the Antifa Blackshirts, and the BLM terrorists are intent on causing fear, intimidation, and panic, in the populace in order to hinder those seeking to maintain fair elections. The enemy will try to weaken and occupy this nation. Election 2020, in some ways, seems similar to the bombardment the patriots faced in such a desperate time. Will citizens express the kind of defiance that old Dr. William Beanes exhibited against the British soldiers? Will Americans show the same kind of resolve to face the Marxists that Major George Armistead displayed at Fort McHenry against the British military?
Like the Clintons, the Obamas have amassed a considerable fortune from politics. Also like the Clintons, they’re not going away. They continue to have an influence over politics and American culture. By becoming Netflix producers, the Obamas made sure their leftist propaganda gets attention.
Neither Michelle nor Barack have said anything about the Netflix program titled “Cuties,” in which young girls are shown in sexually charged poses on a glitzy stage. Susan Rice, a former Obama advisor, is on the Netflix board. She has also been reticent about what many are calling ‘pedophilia.’ Some say their silence is complicity. I agree.
Under Obama’s administration, the ‘trans’ mania began. Boys at high schools could pretend they were girls and win awards in athletic events. Restrooms suddenly became a problem. Then came the claim that there were dozens of genders and various sexual identifications. Anyone who objected got labeled as haters. Eventually, people became fearful. If they used the wrong pronoun or offended an easily offended trans-whatever, they could be fired, banned, or expelled.
I don’t know if Michelle Obama is a transgender or not. The matter is a long-running internet meme. That meme was reinforced when Joan Rivers casually said Michelle was a ‘tranny’ and that it was ‘okay.’ Days later she was dead. Maybe it was okay to her, but not to other powerful people who wanted to keep it under wraps. Even Barack himself has referred to Michelle as “Michael” on several occasions. There have been many who have said Barack Obama is gay. It’s plausible, but such speculation can also easily lead to social media bans.
Now the lying mass media are denouncing Q and his followers. They ridicule those who think there is such as thing as child trafficking and pedophilia occurring among the elite and powerful. Anyone who claims there are plenty of pedophiles pulling top levers of power must obviously be a conspiracy theorist, according to CNN, MSNBC, and all the rest. Yet a lot of evidence does exist. Epstein’s “Orgy Island,” for example.
The fact that the Obamas did not exert influence to stop a show containing obvious pedophilia can only mean they are complicit. Perhaps they want pedophilia to be normalized just as they wanted sexual dysphoria normalized. Meanwhile, they and their colleagues are doing their best to shut down Christians who object.
Question: What American political entity has that relationship to BLM/Antifa? Answer: The Democrat National Committee, et. al. And you might as well sue Mao.
Three posts from July 23-August 8, from this author, compare China’s Cultural Revolution to Black Lives Matter/Antifa. The series began with:
“The Chinese Communist Party’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was the precursor to today’s urban protests involving Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa. As America’s Cancel Culture spread into several Big Blue Cities, largely governed by Democrat politicians for decades, city officials stood back and let it happen.” (Links to parts 1, 2, and 3.)
Frustrated by long delays in receiving any response from Beijing, “thousands descended upon Beijing personally to press their grievances. With official channels clogged and response times painfully slow, many petitioners took to the streets, posting handwritten appeals (known as xiaozibao, or ‘small character posters’) at Xidan, Tiananmen, and elsewhere…Most of the petitioners who descended on Beijing were poor, many were in dire straits. Some had traveled long distances on foot, carrying their possessions in knotted bundles; others had hitched rides into the cities on freight trains or trucks…In all, more than 100,000 out-of-towners descended upon Beijing and Shanghai in 1979, hoping to have their cases reopened…Despite government pledges to review all appeals objectively and impartially, many petitioners complained of receiving unfair treatment.” (Baum, p.76)
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Chairman Mao Zedong, planned and launched the Cultural Revolution.
America: In the wake of the 2007-08 financial failure in America the saying that applied to the big banking institutions was: “Too big to fail.”
In the wake of the damage done by China’s Cultural Revolution, it was: “Too big to blame.”
What will we say when BLM/Antifa is over?
In the wake of the on-going damage to people and private property brought upon many of America’s Big Blue Cities (BBC) at the hands of (1) BLM street posters involving many white, both male and female, virtue-signalers between 17-27 years old, march through residential neighborhoods late at night, stall daytime traffic in downtown areas, and verbally intimidate evening diners in outdoor restaurants, paired up with (2) Antifa thugs dressed in all black who excel at destroying property and beating-up weaker people, we wonder: What will be America’s version of “The Petitioners’ Movement” in post-Cultural Revolution China?
China: The Petitioner’s Movement happened when Chinese victims of the Red Guard sought redress for damages done to them and their property. They eventually went to Beijing for redress, because they knew that’s where it all started.
The unspoken mantra for China’s Petitioners’ Movement was, essentially: “We can’t blame any one person, because that would mean blaming Chairman Mao. And he lives above blame.”
America: Can we count on the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute and, when guilt is proven, punish those in the BLM/Antifa movement who injured persons and damaged private property?
Can we expect the Democrat-elected prosecutors in the BBCs to indict and try those who injured persons, and destroyed property? Perhaps a few—those not elected with Soros money.
So, who will hold those accountable for the carnage that continues to mount-up in the run-up to the General Election, and may escalate after November 3?
China: The CCP led by Mao Zedong gave the green-light to China’s Cultural Revolution. Then stood back, and watched it unfold assuming a life of its own, free of any one person’s control.
It was to the CCP that many of the Cultural Revolution’s victims petitioned for redress for the physical and material damages they sustained. They knew the source, but prudence meant not saying it out loud.
America: Who will Americans petition for redress for the damages that BLM/Antifa brought into their communities?
Shall claims be directed at the big corporations, foundations, and wealthy individuals who seek to buy virtue by donating big money to the BLM/Antifa Movement? (Operationally, the organizations are two heads of the same snake.)
Should victims of the BLM/Antifa movement petition the U.S. Government for damages? That would be like suing the United States Postal Service if one of their trucks hits your new car.
Perhaps those insurance companies that pay out tens-of-millions in damages to looted chain stores will consider recouping part of their loss by suits aimed at BLM’s growing financial assets? But, no, that would tarnish their corporate image by putting the patina of white supremacists on their brand.
That leaves those small, independent businesses that sustained damage to seek redress at the local level. The same local level that let it happen.
Those physically and materially injured by BLM/Antifa may sue their local Blue government for not dispatching their tax-funded Police Departments to bring order to the chaos when it first began, instead of letting it get out of control. Perhaps some of the defunded police money could go to the destroyed small businesses. Or not.
Problem is, more than a few of those municipalities run perilously close to bankruptcy. (See Chicago and NYC.)
To restate the question: How will America’s version of China’s “Petitioners’ Movement” seek to redress the damages done to persons and property by BLM/Antifa?
In short, who pays?
In China, little was done for the victims of the Cultural Revolution. It was born a child of the one-and-only political party, and conceived in the mind of its near deity, Chairman Mao.
Question: What American political entity has that relationship to BLM/Antifa?
Answer: The Democrat National Committee, et. al. And you might as well sue Mao.
Appellate Judge Amy Coney Barrett is at the top of the list for replacements for Justice Ginsberg. Like hydroxychloroquine, simply because Trump nominates her she will be vilified. She is a Catholic and already the Democrats are preparing to tear her apart based on her religions. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame’s law school at the very top of her class. In fact, in 1997, she graduated first in her class, which earned her the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor which was very impressive with respect to her thinking process.
Amy then worked as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who was a strict constructionist. It was Scalia who pushed for reform in the way the courts were treating those charged. The jury was not determining every fact, and Scalia saw this as unconstitutional and argued this position until the rest of the court saw his constitutional argument. Finally, in APPRENDI v. NEW JERSEY No. 99—478. Argued March 28, 2000–Decided June 26, 2000, Scalia defended the citizen’s right to a jury trial which had been eroded by the procedure.
In the Spirit Justice Ginsberg, Amy was the only female law clerk in the Supreme Court at that time. Besides being sitting on the court of appeals, she was also a University of Notre Dame law professor. Ironically, because she has been a dedicated mother of seven, her Catholic faith was turned against her by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein who questioned whether or not she could separate her religious faith from her duty as a judge. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said during the confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals hearing. Barrett insisted that her professional beliefs and her religious beliefs would be kept separate. Ironically, the right to an abortion is deeply entangled with the right to privacy. In the recent case involving the anti-abortion law in Louisiana(1), even conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. struck it down saying that respect for precedent compelled him to do so.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. To understand the foundation of Roe v Wade and why it cannot be overturned without jeopardizing our right to privacy in the face of this contrived pandemic is critical. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution, GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). How do you enforce that a married couple illegally used a condom during sex? Does an FBI agency have to watch? And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults. Again, there is no way to enforce such laws without a government agent observing every sexual act.
To overturn Roe v Wade, would mean that the government can order you to take vaccines that violate your religion that even alter your DNA. While I would never condone an abortion personally, my personal belief cannot blind me to support overturning Roe v Wade opening the door to absolute tyranny. To do so would allow someone like Bill Gates to bribe politicians to pass laws to compel women to have Chips inserted to prevent pregnancy. It would be just one tiny step to then compel you to obtain permission from the government to have a child. They could just as easily impose an IQ test and determine you are not qualified to have children. Gates has already funded remote control birth-control by implanting chips into women. He is obsessed with population control.
The US Supreme Court actually upheld the eugenics views of the in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), where the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., actually ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health of the state” did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Supreme Court actually wrote: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927). This case has not been overturned, but if it were challenged, then the same right to privacy from which Roe v Wade stands would come into play. Overturn that case, and a lot more tyranny will follow. The only possible way to overturn Roe v Wade must involve the Due Process Right to life and liberty without somehow overturning the right to privacy. That can be a real Pandora’s Box.
After reading some of her decisions and this article she wrote regarding the Suspension Clause, I believe she would NOT overturn Roe v Wade simply because of her religion. Here she clearly states that she believes that the statutes involved, which have never been activated since the Civil War domestically, delegate too much discretion to the President. Her reasoning falls in line with Strict Construction championed by Scalia, and therefore I would support her. I believe the far more important question turns on her view of the power of government. She is not a rubber stamp and that is vital to our liberty in the future. I will note, for those who will say I support here only because she is a conservative nominated by Trump, I reviewed the decisions of Brett Kavanaugh and stated on this blog that I would have voted against his nomination.
POLITICO, the leftist view, as usual, states: “Barrett has stated that “life begins at conception,” according to a 2013 Notre Dame Magazine article. She also said that justices should not be strictly bound by Supreme Court precedents, a deference known as stare decisis, leaving open the possibility that she could vote to overturn Roe v. Wade if seated on the court.” Their view is to hell with every other issue, it’s all about abortion exclusively.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi who is in the House, not the Senate which decides appointments to the Supreme Court, has bluntly stated that she doesn’t rule out impeachment to delay Trump’s picks for the Supreme Court. She is so out of her mind and is clearly engaging in the Obstruction of Justice. She is in the House – not the Senate. The House does not preside of these appointments. As a matter of law, she or any senator is not allowed to ask a judge how they would vote on abortion. The Senate is not permitted to nominate a person based upon a prearranged vote. Chief Justice Roberts, a conservative appointed by President Bush, upheld Obamacare. It is often a matter of constitutional law and trying to guess how Barrett will vote exclusively on abortion is impermissible constitutionally. This assumption is discrimination based upon the fact that she is Catholic and has 7 children, two of whom are adopted from Hati.
Diane Feinstein is running again and she 87 while Nancy Pelosi is 80. These two women liberationists from the 60s no longer represent women today. They are traditionally anti-religion and Feinstein’s question of Barrett before illustrates her hatred of not just religion, but the fact that Barrett even has 7 children which she finds obviously disgusting.
Boudin, the SF Public Defender, promised before his election: “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes, such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted. We have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness. There can be no justice when we utilize prison and jail as the solution to all of our problems.” Overall, Soros DAs have helped turn the biggest West Coast cities into third world countries as residents despair and flee.
Last night U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr delivered a speech in celebration of constitution day to an audience at Hillsdale College. Here’s the transcript:
[VIA DOJ] – I am pleased to be at this Hillsdale College celebration of Constitution Day. Sadly, many colleges these days don’t even teach the Constitution, much less celebrate it. But at Hillsdale, you recognize that the principles of the Founding are as relevant today as ever—and vital to the success of our free society. I appreciate your observance of this important day and all you do for civic education in the United States.
When many people think about the virtues of our Constitution, they first mention the Bill of Rights. That makes sense. The great guarantees of the Bill of Rights—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms, just to name the first few—are critical safeguards of liberty. But as President Reagan used to remind people, the Soviet Union had a constitution too, and it even included some lofty-sounding rights. Ultimately, however, those promises were just empty words, because there was no rule of law to enforce them.
The rule of law is the lynchpin of American freedom. And the critical guarantee of the rule of law comes from the Constitution’s structure of separated powers. The Framers recognized that by dividing the legislative, executive, and judicial powers— each significant, but each limited—they would minimize the risk of any form of tyranny. That is the real genius of the Constitution, and it is ultimately more important to securing liberty than the Bill of Rights. After all, the Bill of Rights is a set of amendments to the original Constitution, which the Framers did not think needed an express enumeration of rights.
I want to focus today on the power that the Constitution allocates to the Executive, particularly in the area of criminal justice. The Supreme Court has correctly held that, under Article II of the Constitution, the Executive has virtually unchecked discretion to decide whether to prosecute individuals for suspected federal crimes. The only significant limitation on that discretion comes from other provisions of the Constitution. Thus, for example, a United States Attorney could not decide to prosecute only people of a particular race or religion. But aside from that limitation — which thankfully has remained a true hypothetical at the Department of Justice — the Executive has broad discretion to decide whether to bring criminal prosecutions in particular cases.
The key question, then, is how the Executive should exercise its prosecutorial discretion. Eighty years ago this spring, one of my predecessors in this job —then-Attorney General Robert Jackson — gave a famous speech to a conference of United States Attorneys in which he described the proper role and qualities of federal prosecutors. (By the way, Jackson was one of several former Attorneys General who went on become a Supreme Court Justice. But I am one of only two former Attorneys General who went on to become Attorney General again.)
Much has changed in the eight decades since Justice Jackson’s remarks. But he was a man of uncommon wisdom, and it is appropriate to consider his views in the modern era.
The criminal process is a juggernaut. That was true then and it is true today. Once the criminal process starts rolling, it is very difficult to slow it down or knock it off course. And that means federal prosecutors possess tremendous power — power that is necessary to enforce our laws and punish wrongdoing, but power that, like any power, carries inherent potential for abuse or misuse.
Justice Jackson recognized this. As he put it, “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.” Prosecutors have the power to investigate people and interview their friends, and they can do so on the basis of mere suspicion of general wrongdoing. People facing federal investigations incur ruinous legal costs and often see their lives reduced to rubble before a charge is even filed. Justice Jackson was not exaggerating when he said that “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.”
The power to, as he called it, “strike at citizens, not with mere individual strength, but with all the force of government itself” must be carefully calibrated and closely supervised. Left unchecked, it has the potential to inflict far more harm than it prevents.
1. Political Supervision
The most basic check on prosecutorial power is politics. It is counter-intuitive to say that, as we rightly strive to maintain an apolitical system of criminal justice. But political accountability—politics—is what ultimately ensures our system does its work fairly and with proper recognition of the many interests and values at stake. Government power completely divorced from politics is tyranny.
Justice Jackson understood this. As he explained, presidential appointment and senate confirmation of U.S. Attorneys and senior DOJ officials is what legitimizes their exercises of the sovereign’s power. You are “required to win an expression of confidence in your character by both the legislative and the executive branches of the government before assuming the responsibilities of a federal prosecutor.”
Yet in the decades since Justice Jackson’s remarks, it has become fashionable to argue that prosecutorial decisions are legitimate only when they are made by the lowest-level line prosecutor handling any given case. Ironically, some of those same critics see no problem in campaigning for highly political, elected District Attorneys to remake state and local prosecutorial offices in their preferred progressive image, which often involves overriding the considered judgment of career prosecutors and police officers. But aside from hypocrisy, the notion that line prosecutors should make the final decisions within the Department of Justice is completely wrong and it is antithetical to the basic values underlying our system.
The Justice Department is not a praetorian guard that watches over society impervious to the ebbs and flows of politics. It is an agency within the Executive Branch of a democratic republic — a form of government where the power of the state is ultimately reposed in the people acting through their elected president and elected representatives.
The men and women who have ultimate authority in the Justice Department are thus the ones on whom our elected officials have conferred that responsibility — by presidential appointment and senate confirmation. That blessing by the two political branches of government gives these officials democratic legitimacy that career officials simply do not possess.
The same process that produces these officials also holds them accountable. The elected President can fire senior DOJ officials at will and the elected Congress can summon them to explain their decisions to the people’s representatives and to the public. And because these officials have the imprimatur of both the President and Congress, they also have the stature to resist these political pressures when necessary. They can take the heat for what the Justice Department does or doesn’t do.
Line prosecutors, by contrast, are generally part of the permanent bureaucracy. They do not have the political legitimacy to be the public face of tough decisions and they lack the political buy-in necessary to publicly defend those decisions. Nor can the public and its representatives hold civil servants accountable in the same way as appointed officials. Indeed, the public’s only tool to hold the government accountable is an election — and the bureaucracy is neither elected nor easily replaced by those who are.
Moreover, because these officials are installed by the democratic process, they are most equipped to make the complex judgment calls concerning how we should wield our prosecutorial power. As Justice Scalia observed in perhaps his most admired judicial opinion, his dissent in Morrison v. Olson: “Almost all investigative and prosecutorial decisions—including the ultimate decision whether, after a technical violation of the law has been found, prosecution is warranted—involve the balancing of innumerable legal and practical considerations.”
And those considerations do need to be balanced in each and every case. As Justice Scalia also pointed out, it is nice to say “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.” But it does not comport with reality. It would do far more harm than good to abandon all perspective and proportion in an attempt to ensure that every technical violation of criminal law by every person is tracked down, investigated, and prosecuted to the Nth degree.
Our system works best when leavened by judgment, discretion, proportionality, and consideration of alternative sanctions — all the things that supervisors provide. Cases must be supervised by someone who does not have a narrow focus, but who is broad gauged and pursuing a general agenda. And that person need not be a prosecutor, but someone who can balance the importance of vigorous prosecution with other competing values.
In short, the Attorney General, senior DOJ officials, and U.S. Attorneys are indeed political. But they are political in a good and necessary sense.
Indeed, aside from the importance of not fully decoupling law enforcement from the constraining and moderating forces of politics, devolving all authority down to the most junior officials does not even make sense as a matter of basic management. Name one successful organization where the lowest level employees’ decisions are deemed sacrosanct. There aren’t any. Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it’s no way to run a federal agency. Good leaders at the Justice Department—as at any organization—need to trust and support their subordinates. But that does not mean blindly deferring to whatever those subordinates want to do.
This is what Presidents, the Congress, and the public expect. When something goes wrong at the Department of Justice, the buck stops at the top. 28 U.S.C. § 509 could not be plainer: “All functions of other officers of the Department of Justice and all functions of agencies and employees of the Department of Justice are vested in the Attorney General.”
And because I am ultimately accountable for every decision the Department makes, I have an obligation to ensure we make the correct ones. The Attorney General, the Assistant Attorneys General, and the U.S. Attorneys are not figureheads selected for their good looks and profound eloquence.
They are supervisors. Their job is to supervise. Anything less is an abdication.
Active engagement in our cases by senior officials is also essential to the rule of law. The essence of the rule of law is that whatever rule you apply in one case must be the same rule you would apply to similar cases. Treating each person equally before the law includes how the Department enforces the law.
We should not prosecute someone for wire fraud in Manhattan using a legal theory we would not equally pursue in Madison or in Montgomery, or allow prosecutors in one division to bring charges using a theory that a group of prosecutors in the division down the hall would not deploy against someone who engaged in indistinguishable conduct.
We must strive for consistency. And that is yet another reason why centralized senior leadership exists—to harmonize the disparate views of our many prosecutors into a consistent policy for the Department. As Justice Jackson explained, “we must proceed in all districts with that uniformity of policy which is necessary to the prestige of federal law.”
2. Detachment in Prosecutions
All the supervision in the world will not be enough, though, without a strong culture across the Department of fairness and commitment to even-handed justice. This is what Justice Jackson described as “the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor.” In his memorable turn of phrase, even when “the government technically loses its case, it has really won if justice has been done.”
We want our prosecutors to be aggressive and tenacious in their pursuit of justice, but we also want to ensure that justice is ultimately administered dispassionately.
We are all human. Like any person, a prosecutor can become overly invested in a particular goal. Prosecutors who devote months or years of their lives to investigating a particular target may become deeply invested in their case and assured of the rightness of their cause.
When a prosecution becomes “your prosecution”—particularly if the investigation is highly public, or has been acrimonious, or if you are confident early on that the target committed serious crimes—there is always a temptation to will a prosecution into existence even when the facts, the law, or the fair-handed administration of justice do not support bringing charges.
This risk is inevitable and cannot be avoided simply by — as we certainly strive to do — hiring as prosecutors only moral people with righteous motivations. I am reminded of a passage by C.S. Lewis:
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.
Even the most well-meaning people can do great damage if they lose perspective. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say.
That is yet another reason that having layers of supervision is so important. Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target. Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.
This was of course the central problem with the independent-counsel statute that Justice Scalia criticized in Morrison v. Olson. Indeed, creating an unaccountable headhunter was not some unfortunate byproduct of that statute; it was the stated purpose of that statute. That was what Justice Scalia meant by his famous line, “this wolf comes as a wolf.” As he went on to explain: “How frightening it must be to have your own independent counsel and staff appointed, with nothing else to do but to investigate you until investigation is no longer worthwhile—with whether it is worthwhile not depending upon what such judgments usually hinge on, competing responsibilities. And to have that counsel and staff decide, with no basis for comparison, whether what you have done is bad enough, willful enough, and provable enough, to warrant an indictment. How admirable the constitutional system that provides the means to avoid such a distortion. And how unfortunate the judicial decision that has permitted it.”
Justice Jackson understood this too. As he explained in his speech: “If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.” Any erosion in prosecutorial detachment is extraordinarily perilous. For, “it is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.”
Advocate Just and Reasonable Legal Positions
In exercising our prosecutorial discretion, one area in which I think the Department of Justice has some work to do is recalibrating how we interpret criminal statutes.
In recent years, the Justice Department has sometimes acted more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice based on clear and sensible legal rules. In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyper-aggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong and we must stop doing it.
The rule of law requires that the law be clear, that it be communicated to the public, and that we respect its limits. We are the Department of Justice, not the Department of Prosecution.
We should want a fair system with clear rules that the people can understand. It does not serve the ends of justice to advocate for fuzzy and manipulable criminal prohibitions that maximize our options as prosecutors. Preventing that sort of pro-prosecutor uncertainty is what the ancient rule of lenity is all about. That rule should likewise inform how we at the Justice Department think about the criminal law.
Advocating for clear and defined prohibitions will sometimes mean we cannot bring charges against someone whom we believe engaged in questionable conduct. But that is what it means to have a government of laws and not of men. We cannot let our desire to prosecute “bad” people turn us into the functional equivalent of the mad Emperor Caligula, who inscribed criminal laws in tiny script atop a tall pillar where nobody could see them.
To be clear, what I am describing is not the Al Capone situation — where you have someone who committed countless crimes and you decide to prosecute him for only the clearest violation that carries a sufficient penalty. I am talking about taking vague statutory language and then applying it to a criminal target in a novel way that is, at a minimum, hardly the clear consequence of the statutory text.
This is inherently unfair because criminal prosecutions are backward-looking. We charge people with crimes based on past conduct. If it was unknown or even unclear that the conduct was illegal when the person engaged in it, that raises real questions about whether it is fair to prosecute the person criminally for it.
Examples of the Department defending these sorts of extreme positions are unfortunately numerous, as are rejections of our novel arguments by the Supreme Court. These include arguments as varied as the Department insisting that a Philadelphia woman violated the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act — which implemented the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction — by putting chemicals on her neighbor’s doorknob as part of an acrimonious love triangle involving the woman’s husband, which the Supreme Court unanimously rejected in Bond v. United States … to arguing that a fisherman violated the “anti-shredding” provision in Sarbanes-Oxley when he threw undersized grouper over the side of his boat, which the Supreme Court rejected in Yates v. United States … to arguing that aides to the Governor of New Jersey fraudulently “obtained property” from the government when they realigned the lanes on the George Washington Bridge to create a traffic jam, which the Supreme Court unanimously rejected earlier this year in Kelly v. United States. There are other examples, but these illustrate the point.
Taking a capacious approach to criminal law is not only unfair to criminal defendants and bad for the Justice Department’s track record at the Supreme Court, it is corrosive to our political system. If criminal statutes are endlessly manipulable, then everything becomes a potential crime. Rather than watch policy experts debate the merits or demerits of a particular policy choice, we are nowadays treated to ad naseum speculation by legal pundits — often former prosecutors themselves — that some action by the President, a senior official, or a member of congress constitutes a federal felony under this or that vague federal criminal statute.
This criminalization of politics is not healthy. The criminal law is supposed to be reserved for the most egregious misconduct — conduct so bad that our society has decided it requires serious punishment, up to and including being locked away in a cage. These tools are not built to resolve political disputes and it would be a decidedly bad development for us to go the way of third world nations where new administrations routinely prosecute their predecessors for various ill-defined crimes against the state. The political winners ritually prosecuting the political losers is not the stuff of a mature democracy.
The Justice Department abets this culture of criminalization when we are not disciplined about what charges we will bring and what legal theories we will bless. Rather than root out true crimes — while leaving ethically dubious conduct to the voters — our prosecutors have all too often inserted themselves into the political process based on the flimsiest of legal theories. We have seen this time and again, with prosecutors bringing ill-conceived charges against prominent political figures, or launching debilitating investigations that thrust the Justice Department into the middle of the political process and preempt the ability of the people to decide.
This criminalization of politics will only worsen until we change the culture of concocting new legal theories to criminalize all manner of questionable conduct. Smart, ambitious lawyers have sought to amass glory by prosecuting prominent public figures since the Roman Republic. It is utterly unsurprising that prosecutors continue to do so today to the extent the Justice Department’s leaders will permit it.
As long as I am Attorney General, we will not.
Our job is to prosecute people who commit clear crimes. It is not to use vague criminal statutes to police the mores of politics or general conduct of the citizenry. Indulging fanciful legal theories may seem right in a particular case under particular circumstances with a particularly unsavory defendant—but the systemic cost to our justice system is too much to bear.
We need to recognize that and must take to heart the Supreme Court’s recent, unanimous admonition that “not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime.”
If we do not, more lives will be unfairly ruined. And more unanimous admonitions from the Supreme Court will come.
3. Conclusion
In short, it is important for prosecutors at the Department of Justice to understand that their mission — above all others — is to do justice. That means following the letter of the law, and the spirit of fairness. Sometimes that will mean investing months or years in an investigation and then concluding it without criminal charges. Other times it will mean aggressively prosecuting a person through trial and then recommending a lenient sentence, perhaps even one with no incarceration.
Our job is to be just as dogged in preventing injustice as we are in pursuing wrongdoing. On this score, as on many, Justice Jackson said it best:
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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