Posted on 06/01/2019 5:20:27 AM PDT by billorites
I have been saying this exact same thing about Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy.
Nobody else could have done what he is doing. No one.
Trump and Barr are the perfect storm.
Of course. The yahoos don’t care. They will burn down the world and all in it to achieve their objectives—or in revenge, if they can’t. Note tagline.
He speaks beautifully. I just hope this will result in action — like a fistful of indictments.
Great quote. Reminds me of how Nixon refused to challenge the results of the 1960 election because he thought it would be bad for the country. The 'rats have tried to undermine the results of every election (in which they lost) since 2000.
You missed the point if you think he gives a damn about winning over the left. He only cares about enforcing the law, regardless of left or right.
***************
If that’s the case why doesn’t he come right out and say that? No, it appears (and I say this based on several comments he has made lately) that he is trying to defuse the Left and establish the narrative that he’s a fair guy. And to a certain extent, I agree with this approach as the media is anxious to paint him as a partisan defender of his boss. I also think he’s trying to tamp down expectation on the right.
But that said, if he only cares about enforcing the law, regardless of left or right, then just dispense with all the soft talk and make that unmistakably clear (i.e., I took the job to hold people accountable for their actions, some of which were illegal, unethical, destructively partisan, and damaging to both our political system and the reputations of our most trusted federal agencies).
Remember, Barr is heading into battle. He’s going to be viscously attacked by Swamp, and the flak will get heavier as he nears the target. They (and their allies in the media) know what’s at stake and will send everything they have against him. So Barr may be trying to soften their defenses.
Thanks billorites.
Win over the left? Barr is a honey badger. He don’t give a damn. As he said, he is at the end of his career and everyone dies.
Our “norms” and institutions were already destroyed. These displays of Trump Derangement Syndrome simply make it obvious.
How else can you explain their total devotion to everything from killing babies to sexual deviance to sullying our nation’s founders to choosing Islam over Christianity...and, of course, the list goes on.
It seems as if any idea that is wrong or evil on its face earns the unwavering support of the left.
Barr is a honey badger.
***************
I hope you’re right. But I think some conservatives are not going to be that happy with the end results. Barr seems a lot more concerned about protecting process than meting out punishment.
Without punishment this is guaranteed to happen again and will essentially send the message that abuses of power are not taken seriously.
The double standard, while not new at all since at least a Democrat was willing to brag about it during Reagan’s tenure, comes when the party that effectively exercises it, protecting its own endlessly while ruthlessly conducting witch hunts, has become a criminal enterprise and also has a complicit, subservient media.
This.I’ve been cogitating seriously on this issue for the past four decades. If not longer. My conclusions are:
- The wire services, beginning with the advent of the AP only four years after Samuel Morse's 1844 demo of the Baltimore-Washington telegraph, created national journalism as we know it, and inherently homogenized it. As Adam Smith put it,
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”. . . and the AP “wire” is nothing but a virtual meeting of major journalism outlets.
- Under the aegis of the wire services, journalism promotes journalism - by a massive propaganda campaign to the effect that “journalism is objective.” But that is not only a sales pitch, it is a shot across the bow of anyone who claims to be a journalist but who dares question the objectivity of any journalist in good standing with the group as a whole. To be in good standing with establishment journalism is to never question any other journalist’s objectivity - and to participate in reading out of the profession anyone who violates that rule. Such person is “not a journalist, not objective.”
- Commercial - not philosophical but commercial - rules such as “If it bleeds, it leads” cause journalism to seek and promote stories about bad news. In a word, journalism is negative - and journalists all know it.
- The claim that journalism is objective, therefore, is equivalent to a claim that “negativity is objectivity.” And you show me someone who asserts that, and I’ll show you a cynic. Commercial journalism as we know it is cynical.
- Blanket cynicism would be incoherent; if “A” and “B” be opposites, cynicism towards “A” is incompatible with cynicism towards “B.” In fact, cynicism towards “A” logically corresponds to naive faith in “B.” In that sense, ironically, cynicism is naive.
- Per Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, society is a blessing and government a necessary (or worse) evil. Journalism is cynical towards society, and naive towards government. And that combination, I put it to you, is the true definition of “socialism.” The Democrat Party systematically goes along with journalism and, consequently, gets along with journalism very well indeed. It is little if any overstatement to say that while Republicans get libeled very often, Democrats never get libeled.
- The famous New York Times v. Sullivan decision asserted that to vindicate the First Amendment it was necessary to essentially prohibit government officials from suing for libel. Sullivan was a unanimous ruling by the Warren Court, with enthusiastic concurrences. I have come to the view that it differs from the Rhenquist Court’s Morrison v. Olson decision only in that the Warren Court didn’t have a Justice Scalia. Scalia, new to the court at the time, filed a blistering lone dissent in the Morrison case - an opinion which is now considered the final word on the issue of the legitimacy of Special Counsel.
The Warren Court erred, IMHO, in extrapolating a decision rejecting the weak specific case of Mr. Sullivan to the general issue while ignoring essentially everything I said above - which was already true in 1964, and has only gotten more obvious. All conservatives revere the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but there was a hidden flaw in the Warren Court’s interpretation of it. Because, as Scalia has said, the First Amendment did not create freedom of the press, and in fact did not change the law at all. Nobody who wanted the Bill of Rights wanted to change the law - they just wanted to prevent the law from being changed. Freedom of the press already existed, and the First Amendment protected that. But libel and pornography laws already existed too - and the First Amendment was crafted so as not to call them into question. And so was the Ninth Amendment.
The First Amendment protects “the freedom . . . of the press,” not “freedom of the press” generally. The freedom of the press did not, then or now, include the right to libel someone without losing a lawsuit and paying damages. The Ninth Amendment, I put it to you, protects your right to redress if you are libeled even though that right is not articulated explicitly in the Constitution and “freedom . . . of the press” is.
In sum, Sullivan institutes a regime where “the press” is given carte blanche. Naturally, the press would like it. But the true purpose of freedom of the press is to “let a hundred flowers bloom” - and a regime of law in which Democrats are entitled not only to their own opinions but to their own facts is not that.
(Note that I said “Democrats don’t get libeled” even though Mr. Sullivan was a Democrat. But he was a southern Democrat - an extinct species now, and an easy target then. No conventional Democrat today would own him - rather, they would hang him, like David Duke, around the necks of the Republicans).
Barr's a good man - he'll let the chips fall where they may... We're blessed by his courage. All of us.
None of our freedoms allow for actions without consequences... the second allows a person to be armed - but not to shoot another person outside the constraints of law..
Well said.
I would also add, drawing from thinking like this old essay of mine: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1628444/posts
... that the rise of the, as you put it, homogenized press, was a further contraction of the rights of those that acted as the press (when they tried to publish their news/opinion/commentary), transferring it to a profession, and ultimately to those with certain credentials.
It is not the freedom for a profession that was meant, but of the people. The profession is covered because the professional are people and not the other way around.
I would say that the “stewardship” of professional journalists over the right of the free press has been almost as disasterous for the country as the “stewardship” of lawyers over the Law.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718921/posts
Mr Barr, jail your friend Mr Mueller.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.