Wow. It certainly was some week. Not a great week mind you, as far as the history of the United States goes, but it was a unique week. That is, if you are hell-bent on destroying the government of a Constitutional Republic by subverting the democratic rule of law. If you believe in those things, as I do, then it was quite a lousy week.
To start with, there was the orange man child’s televised meltdown in the Rose Garden on Thursday. That was a Trump special and more factual proof that Donald Trump is categorically unfit to be President of the United States. This was supposed to be a “spontaneous” press conference – it was anything but. Trump planned to blow up the talks on infrastructure, I agree with Nancy Pelosi on that, because Trump does not want to cross the Galtian Overlords to find a way to pay for it. Also, Trump does not care about policy or moving the country forward. He wants to cater to the insane rubes who make up his “base.” By his way of thinking, it’s a twofer. He gets to look tough, and he gets not to do anything at all. It might have worked, save for the fact that, as Charles Pierce points out, Trump is batshit crazy.
This was an “avail” of demented perfection. The man who bought off Stormy Daniels so thoroughly that his bagman is in the federal sneezer said, “I don’t do cover-ups,” and, against all the odds, his tongue did not burn with fire. The constitutional genius with the world’s greatest brain made certain to remind Democrats that, as unlikely as this sounds, one day in the far distant future—of the year, say, 1998—a Republican Congress might bring “the I-word” against a Democratic president for frivolous reasons. I mean, good lord, the Clintons came to one of his weddings. Didn’t they talk? The man has a brain of tapioca.
Otherwise, the press availability was pretty much an impromptu performance of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. More talk of witch-hunts and hoaxes and a lot of yammering about how transparent he’s been and a monstrous exaggeration of his alleged accomplishments. One can picture White House aides hiding under desks and skulking down back alleys in search of noonday whiskey. And, as the reports that leaked out in the immediate aftermath of the meeting revealed, the president* went somewhat berserk even by his own standards and walked out after three whole minutes. Pelosi responded at her own news conference by slipping in the Italian-Catholic version of the shiv used by Southern Belles when they say, “Bless Your Heart.”
“I pray for the President of the United States and for our country,” she said.
Good thing she prays for the President, because I don’t.
And then, just to add insult
to injury, Trump had a second media availability. This time bringing in all the
hostages White House Staffers to testify to his supposed stability. Interestingly
enough two of them were not even at the meeting. But I think its already been
clearly established that facts mean nothing to this monster. Once again, I’ll
support the opposition: “When the ‘extremely stable genius’ starts acting more
presidential,” she wrote online, “I’ll be happy to work with him on
infrastructure, trade and other issues.”-Nancy Pelosi
That’s not going to happen.
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Of course, all of this was meant to serve as a distraction while the hatchet men of this administration were doing the President’s bidding and pissing all over the Constitution.
It started with this:
Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan has mandated new restrictions on the way the Pentagon shares information with Congress about military operations around the world, a move that is straining ties with key Republican and Democratic lawmakers. In a May 8 internal memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, Shanahan lays out the criteria for when Pentagon officials may provide congressional offices or committees information they request about operational plans and orders…
…The memo was shared widely inside the Pentagon but was sent to key lawmakers only after inquiries by The Post. It outlines a half-dozen guidelines, including requirements that military officials and political appointees evaluate whether the request “contains sufficient information to demonstrate a relationship to the legislative function.” The memo urges Defense Department officials to provide a summary briefing rather than a requested plan or order itself.
I wonder where we have heard that little term before, “legislative function”? First of all, Shanahan does not get to determine what is or is not a legitimate legislative function. And second, the Constitution is pretty clear about the concepts of legislative oversight, and the fact that the Congress, not the Executive, appropriates monies for war and has the power to declare war. This is move is, as Charles Pierce calls it, “pure, authoritarian audacity. “
Clearly, somebody in the White House counsel’s office—or, perhaps, in the office of the Attorney General, and the person is perhaps standing right at this moment in the AG’s socks and underwear—has fallen in mad monkey love with this “relationship to legislative function” dodge, which two federal judges already have laughed out of court in matters concerning the president*’s finances. Now it’s being trotted out any time the administration* wants to do something of which the House of Representatives disapproves.
What is being attempted here is the de facto redefinition of the powers of the Legislative Branch by members of the Executive, who maintain the preposterous position that they themselves can define the limits of congressional inquiries into their own action. This not only turns the Constitution on its head, but it also rewrites the first two articles thereof in a way that would’ve sent James Madison diving head-first into a cask of fine Madeira.
That’s exactly what it does and is one more example of how the administration is trying hard to trample on separation of powers. This has to be opposed.
Which is especially true when you consider the two other things that were announced this week. First off, Trump did this:
Trump is giving Barr a new tool in his investigation, empowering his attorney general to unilaterally unseal documents that the Justice Department has historically regarded as among its most highly secret. Warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for instance, are not made public — not even to the person on whom the surveillance was authorized. Trump explicitly delegated Barr with declassification power — noting it would not automatically extend to another attorney general — and only for use in the review of the Russia investigation. Before using the new authority, Barr should consult with intelligence officials “to the extent he deems it practicable,” Trump wrote in a memo formalizing the matter.
This is extremely dangerous and will have many, many, unintended second and third order effects. Malcolm Nance correctly points out a few of them:
There are red flags being raised in both law enforcement and the intelligence community. It is, as I said, dangerous when in the wrong hands and Barr’s hands are quite dangerous as his handling of the Mueller report proved. Added to that deliberate bit of hackery, is the documented history Barr has to support the theory of a unitary executive.
Taken together, they are sign after sign that Trump wants to move forward with his worst authoritarian instincts. He’s sending a message to law enforcement, ” do what I {Trump} wants, or {Trump} will make your life a living hell”. That’s on top of the fact that Trump also said he wants to kill his critics:
He reiterated Thursday that he believes he is the victim of a long-running effort that meant to stop him from winning in 2016, delegitimize his presidency and remove him from office either through impeachment or by Democrats damaging him enough with investigations that he can’t be re-elected. He has charged that some of his adversaries are guilty of treason, and he was asked Thursday to provide the names of people who should be held accountable for a crime punishable by death. Trump answered with a list of names: McCabe, Comey, former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former Justice Department official Lisa Page. Strzok and Page exchanged text messages during the 2016 campaign — when the FBI was investigating Trump’s operation — that disparaged him, and Trump says attempted to prevent him from winning.
He answered with a list of names. Of people he thinks should be tried as traitors. He is aligning himself with the viewpoint of dictators and tyrants, the United States of America used to say it opposed. Aligning himself with values the United States used to say it wanted nothing to do with. Think about that.
It’s probably worth mentioning too, that the Trump administration is continuing its war on the First Amendment as well. Yet another event happened this week to reinforce that conclusion.
And the last signifying event on Thursday was the superseding indictment filed by the Department of Justice against Julian Assange, who now stands accused not of helping Chelsea Manning hack a government server, but of 17 violations of the Espionage Act in sharing the fruits of Manning’s hacking with various news organizations. This move runs headlong into both the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Pentagon Papers case. But with the very real possibility that Assange may never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom, it’s incumbent on us to look for another motive for this overreaching indictment. From The New York Times:
For the purposes of press freedoms, what matters is not who counts as a journalist, but whether journalistic activities — whether performed by a “journalist” or anyone else — can be crimes in America. The Trump administration’s move could establish a precedent used to criminalize future acts of national-security journalism, said Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “The charges rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day,” he said. “The indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom.”
If you’re an investigative reporter, and you get a tip about, say, where Deutsche Bank got some of its money, and you hear this news, you’re not sleeping well tonight, I guarantee you. And that’s the point.
Now I am not a fan of Julian Assange in any way shape or form. He is certainly not a true journalist – he was and is a provocateur and most probably a rapist if Sweden is to be believed. But I think it’s critically important to look at the underlying legal logic behind the charges that the administration is bringing. They are not about Assange.
The government should not get to decide who is and isn’t a journalist. And drawing a distinction is beside the point. “The question isn’t whether Assange is a journalist, but whether the government’s legal theory threatens freedom of the press,” Carrie DeCell, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote on Twitter. “It does. The government argues that Assange violated the Espionage Act by soliciting, obtaining, and then publishing classified information. That’s exactly what good national security and investigative journalists do every day.” The solicitation charges are based on open calls for information that WikiLeaks posted on its website, a practice common to many news organizations. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said that the charges pose “a dire threat”; the Freedom of the Press Foundation called them “terrifying.” Ted Boutros, a prominent media lawyer, said that the US government wants to use Assange’s bad name to cover for a dangerous precedent. “There’s a real element of picking the weakest of the herd, or the most unpopular figure, to try to blunt the outcry,” Boutros told The New York Times.
When viewed in the aggregate, what we are seeing here is a full frontal assault on the instruments of American Democracy. What’s disturbing is that this is not self evident to every American citizen but the most demented, red hat wearing cultist’s. But even now, after over 2 years of this man making a mockery of Presidential norms, there are still people saying ,”it is just politics. Both sides do it. Stop getting so worked up over it.”
Anyone who says that, is utterly wrong. And a complacent fool. I’ll let Mr. Nichols explain it to you.
These are dangerous times and our window of opportunity to stop this madness is shrinking.
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A final administrative note: I’ll be taking the site down for a day or so to do some internal work. One, to make some fixes and also to finish forensics on an attack that was made on this site this week. Working with my hosting provider I was able to trace the general area the attack came from and can deduce the kind of people who did it. It’s the third attack in 30 months.
I supposed I should feel honored that a group of Americans feels so upset by my tiny blog with it’s tiny readership, a blog that serves only to provide an outlet for my own bonafide rights to self-expression, that they can’t respect my rights to do so. If these were normal times, that would be enough.
But these are not normal times and these people are a type. These are the enablers of a great evil that has fallen upon the land of my birth and its not just enough for them to criticize. As I pointed out back in 2016, when I called the election, The Vengeance Election – these “New Afrikaners” want more. Much more. In addition to trying to attain their one-party political apartheid, they are going to go after their critics. Don’t believe me? Look again:
To remain silent in the face of the biggest scandal of our time is to cede the playing field and the country to people who are not worthy of it. We have to continue to speak out and demand that the country improve itself, because deep down – and like me- we have seen examples of how it can be fixed. So Sancho and I will saddle up and continue to tilt at this monstrous windmill.