A Justice System in Disarray
From the Writer’s Almanac: Today is the birthday of the Dutch dancer and spy Mata Hari, born in the Netherlands (1876)…..The exact nature of her spy activities is not clear, but she probably didn’t engage in much actual espionage.
She was well known by sight all over Europe. She had apparently sold some outdated information about France to the Germans in 1916, and then later made a deal with the head of French intelligence to spy on the Germans in exchange for a pass to visit her Russian lover in the eastern war zone. The French became suspicious that she was a double agent, and she never was able to provide much useful information, so she was tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad in 1917. One of her prosecutors later admitted, “There wasn’t enough evidence [against her] to flog a cat.”
This may remind us of the vagaries of the criminal justice system as it exists today in the United States. In particular, what is it going to take to get Donald Trump out of office? I understand that he’s not been convicted of a crime, nor has he been indicted, though keep in mind none of this is necessary to move forward with impeachment.
There is ample evidence that Trump has at least welcomed Russian interference with our elections, that he is blocking attempts to prevent further such abuse, that he has obstructed justice on at least several occasions (see graphic below from linked report), that he stands in violation of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that he flagrantly misused his charitable foundation, with “improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations.”
Of course, this doesn’t get at the “softer” issues: a pathological liar (currently averaging 13 lies/day, up from ~6.5 his first year), emotionally unstable (e.g., putting world peace at risk by pulling out of Iranian deal, only because Obama had made it), etc.
What, precisely, do you want?
Separate question: What precedent does this set for future presidents?
Craig,
I don’t know about “flogging a Cat” , but you continue to flog a long dead horse!
The Mueller Inquiry has been revealed as an inconsequential expensive waste of time. The FBI senior officials and some Intelligence officials are about to be investigated and charged with a range of criminal offences and it appear Mueller himself may have lied and to a judge and misled Congress.
Whether Mueller lied for sinister or just over-zealous motives, is yet to be established.
So far all the President’s accuser’s (CNN’s Racheal Maddow for example) have been proved to be either overly-excited fantasists at best, or politically motivates deliberate liars.
The idea of impeaching a president because you don’t like him and reckon he must be up to no good, is bizarre and come 2020 with be punished by the US voters.
” Welcoming genuine revelations of wrong doing by your opponents”, from any source isn’t actually illegal. It’s not conspiracy, collusion or any other crime.
As for the rest, you must be very desperate to continue to re-hash old long debunked scandals.
Today, Michelle Goldberg trumpeted in the NY Times ” Trump Is a White Nationalist Who Inspires Terrorism “. A number of angry relatives of victims of the Dayton Shooting massacre condemned her exploitation of a tragedy to score political hatred for her own political agenda.
The victims and their families are quite right, the actions of extremists are not down to any politician, left or right. Those democrats seeking to use the occasion to demonstrate in EL Paso and the cynical attempts to exploit the President’s visit for political gain, are the ones stoking the fires of hatred and division.
The NYT and leftist press has much to answer for. What did you think would be the result of
continually stoking the fires of hate and divisiveness ? Do you really imagine screeching even more abusive ranting would be conducive to helping curb extremism?
Donald trump may be a combative political campaigner, and only to ready to respond to attacks, but to takes two to start a fight. His opponents have at times been violent, hysterical, relentless and extreme. What’s worse, these opponent’s have found eager accomplices among formerly respected news and media outlets.
Most of these outlets were suffering from a dearth of readership before the 2016 election. The vilification of President trump has seen their audiences swell and the more rabid and extreme the better the ratings.
Christ advocated “love thy enemies”, MLK admonished, ” Hate in your enemy only dies when they realize you will not hate back. Eventually, hate will turn to shame and regret”.
In contrast, the NYT’s motto is “find more rabid hatred, it swells circulation and sells advertising space”!
The question for you is quite simple, do you want to continue being part of the problem, or put aside your outrage and be part of the solution?
,
Craig,
There is no question that race hatred has suddenly become an issue in the USA.
But what’s the origin of this hatred? Have race relations among Americans become really such an issue, or is the issue almost entirely down to the media and political classes?
I believe the latter to be true. President Trump is not racist when he criticizes the poverty,corruption and dysfunction of cities which have been democrat for decades and have largely black or Hispanic populations.
President Trump is not “racist” in opposing illegal migration simply because most illegal migrant are Hispanic.
Labeling “racist” any criticism of wrong doing corruption or just political opposition by black or Hispanic politicians, isn’t racist, in fact, excusing any criticism because of the persons ethnicity is racist! (and patronizing).
There’s no doubt President Trump is unafraid to be politically incorrect and attack his enemies in a most un-Presidential style.
In a short space of time, the President rump told four ethnic minority congresswomen, three of them natural born citizens, to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested” “countries” “from which they came.”
He described the African American Congressman Elijah Cummings as a “bully” and his city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” while simultaneously labeling the Rev. Al Sharpton, “a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score” who “Hates Whites & Cops!”
Racist? No. Each of these remarks, although crude, was accurate and in response to attacks on America. The President has used the same rhetoric against all those with whom he has fierce disputes regardless of the ethnicity.
The President’s is very much an “equal opportunity” confrontationalist !
As James Kirchick writing in The Hill pointed out, “Trump’s opponents on the left have turned themselves into committed ideologues with a programmatic understanding of human behavior and human differences rooted in some biological component that is impossible or nearly impossible to change.
The way the left talks incessantly about “white men,” or openly puts membership in victim groups above individual rights and virtues, is the essence of what most people mean by racism. Not “reverse racism”but real, actual, racism”.
The American left have become “Pavlovian” in their responses to this President. Anything Trump supports must be opposed, and anything he opposes must be supported, to the hilt and in abundance, causing them to embrace and defend some of the worst people and behavior imaginable.
Insisting that someone with a “brown” or “black” face must endorse a set of ideological precepts that one’s skin color ought to determine how one thinks and acts,is textbook racism.
The problem is exacerbated when progressives start to define everything, even the most mundane of encounters through the prism of “racism”. Highly privileged National Book Award winner, Yale professor, $625,000 MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, has spent an entire career finding racist action in every White male she meets.
In her paranoia she rails against “white male privilege,” recording even the most trivial of encounters with various white men, each and every single one of whom she imbued with an all-enveloping sense of white supremacy. A man cuts in front of her in the first-class line at an airport, or a New York cab, is just a rude, harried individual but a “racist”.
In the leftist media the word “white” has become a gleeful synonym for “ignorant,” “bigoted,” or “unenlightened.
Steven Colbert guest and fellow traveler Molly Knight proposed to much applause, “What if we just let black women run everything,” author , to which actor Mark Ruffalo smarmily responded, “I’m definitely ready for that. I said a prayer the other day and when God answered me back she was a Black Woman.”
The point is the obsession by the left about racism, political correctness etc, is fueling the fires of race hatred and resentment more effectively than any idiotic “white Supremacist” could ever hope to accomplish.
By praising the rabidly racist and anti-Semitic Al Sharpton, and others of his ilk, the American left not only lose their credibility, but prove thay would rather poor gasoline on the fires of racism than water.
Extremists, whether they be the crazed gunman in El Paso claiming to be a “white Supremacist” or the leftist “antifa” gunman in Dayton, are fueled by paranoia, social media and impotence.
By seeking to make political capital out of these criminal acts by unbalanced individuals, the media and democrat politicians stand morally reprehensible.
In contrast, the President has repeatedly condemned these acts while carefully and emphatically pointing out that Joe Biden and the other Democrat candidates are not to blame.
The President repeatedly stated his opponents are not responsible for the actions of the Clinton campaign aide who decided to kill Republican members of Congress at a baseball match.
To his disgrace, former President Obama weighed in blaming his successor for causing these massacres despite having even more mass shootings during his term in office.
I believe it’s time for both sides to tone down the rhetoric.