New William Barr Book Hits Trump, Excuses Self

 

Based upon accounts of William Barr's new book, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General", one thing seems clear; Barr was more evil than the man, Donald Trump, whom he criticizes. According to Barr, Trump "was off the rails" after he lost the election and has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to be a good leader. Barr, on the other hand, knowingly did Trump's bidding until nearly the very end of the president's term notwithstanding the illegal, immoral and undemocratic character of the demands made by the unhinged president.

Barr tries to brush aside his own violations of the rule of law and his undermining of the independence of the Department of Justice, which he treated as an arm of Trump's political machine. His distortion of the Mueller Report, unseemly intervention on behalf of Roger Stone and his inexplicable dismissal of the case against Michael Flynn, despite the latter's guilty plea, are all swept away without adequate explanation or legal justification. Only when it became apparent that Trump had totally lost it and made demands on Barr that threatened to involve him in patently criminal activity, did Barr resist and incur the wrath of his master. He slipped quietly away and now, with a book to sell, he re-emerges as a self-proclaimed guardian of good government. 

Please spare us the absurdity Mr. Barr. Your belated critique of Donald Trump, and self-serving defense of your own unethical behavior are too much to stomach. 

2 Manhattan Prosecutors Quit Over Trump Inquiry

 

After less than two months in office it is reported that New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg has overridden the judgment of his senior staff and decided not to pursue the pending criminal investigation against the Trump organization and Mr. Trump. Two Assistant DAs heading the investigation, each of whom have been involved for many months and have special expertise in such matters, reportedly have resigned in protest.

While one should not make judgments from afar and without knowing all of the facts, the decision by Mr. Bragg is startling and seems to fly in the face of mounting evidence that Trump and his company criminally gamed  the system to reduce taxes and obtain bank loans. 

The Manhattan DA’s office has long had a reputation for excellence and non-partisanship. If that reputation is to be preserved Mr. Bragg must speedily, and convincingly,  explain the basis for his decision.

Supreme Court Will Revisit Free Speech/Gay Marriage

 Once again, the ultra-conservative members of the Supreme Court will have an opportunity to permit so-called religious liberty to override a state law prohibiting gender discrimination. A web designer in Colorado intends to announce that she will not provide her otherwise publicly available service to same sex marriages because of her religious convictions. A state law prohibits such discriminatory messaging by businesses open to the general public.  

Although the court has limited the issue to one involving free speech, it seems likely that the justices who have made clear they want to overturn existing precedent, will seize the opportunity to exalt religious beliefs over the right to be protected from discrimination.

None other than the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion upholding a neutral state law of general applicability against a First Amendment challenge which alleged a violation of the right of free exercise of religion. Justices Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch believe that case was wrongly decided and should be reversed. What these justices seem unable to grasp is that the free exercise of religion should not be permitted to invade the statutory and constitutional rights of others. A secular society can not conform its laws to the dictates of a particular religion. That would be tantamount to living under Sharia law.

Court Ruling on Drilling

 The decision, by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, (2/21, A11) which holds that using the “social cost of carbon “in weighing the impact of drilling for gas and oil on federal property is unconstitutional because that metric had not been authorized by Congress, is a judicial disgrace.

Agencies of the federal government are authorized to make rules. Courts have long recognized that authority and have generally deferred to the expertise of those agencies when reviewing their decisions.
The judge in this case put politics before precedent and bought into the notion that the economic benefits to states, of drilling for gas and oil on federal land, somehow outweighs the damage done by carbon use to the survivability of the planet. The court invented a nonexistent constitutional right to justify its indefensible ruling. If the Supreme Court upholds this judicial activism, it will forfeit any remaining public confidence it may still retain

The Supreme Court Is on the Wrong Path

 

Professor Adrian Vermeule, in his essay, "The Supreme Court Is on the Wrong Path" (2/2; SR2) wistfully longs for a time when the Justices of the Supreme Court interpreted the law in the service of the "common good". If ever there was such a time, which is doubtful, the Court recently, in the Professor's view, has strayed from that path.

No one should dispute Prof. Vermeule's contention, that the overarching purpose of the law is to promote the general welfare or the common good. And he is right to argue that originalist judges sacrifice that goal to a pointless obeisance to ancient views of justice in their search for contemporary meaning and often deviate from that practice when it better serves their favored result.

But Prof. Vermeule does a disservice to progressive judges when he suggests that their decision-making prompts division rather than common good. Indeed, all but one of the cases marshaled by Prof. Vermeule, as examples of bad judgment, expose the foibles of originalism, not progressivism.

While it may be possible to define common good in general terms, as does Prof. Vermeule, it is far less susceptible of a commonly accepted application. As the old saying goes, one man's meat is another man's poison. Still, it would seem the reasoning of progressive judges is far more consistent with the promotion of basic values than the stilted perspective of originalists.

The Courts and Racial Injustice

 

The latest indicator of the racially benighted status of the criminal justice system in the United States is the wildly disparate sentences handed out to persons convicted of voter fraud. Four white men who voted in the names of deceased relatives received sentences ranging from probation (three cases) to three days incarceration. These men knowingly violated the law, and one even used his crime as a pretext to further his campaign for voter suppression.

Other persons, mostly of color, were sentenced to years in jail for mistakenly believing, in good faith, that they were entitled to cast a vote. If these outrageously unwarranted prison terms are not overturned, or substantially reduced by appellate courts or the governors of the involved states, the stain of this injustice will undermine public confidence in the judiciary for years to come.