More thoughtcrime
It started with the judicial decisions that put a stay on Trump’s “Muslim ban”-that-was-not-a-Muslim-ban because the courts decided his real intent—based on some much earlier campaign statements—was to institute an actual Muslim ban.
In other related news, the legal reasoning several judges used to invalidate Trump’s immigration EOs””that his campaign statements were extremely relevant and indicated his supposedly discriminatory intent in issuing the orders as president””leads inevitably to preposterous conclusions such as these:
ACLU lawyer Omar Jadwat, arguing today before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, told the court that President Trump’s travel order “could be constitutional” if it had been written by Hillary Clinton”¦
The last part of the audio is rather funny. Jadwat, asked whether the order on its face is valid, says No. Why? “I don’t think so, Your Honor, because the order is completely unprecedented.” To which one of the Fourth Circuit judges replies, with astonishment that seems mostly genuine: “So the first order on anything is invalid?”
In his post, John Hinderaker calls that kind of legal argument “lawless nonsense.” But such lawless nonsense follows directly from the judicial decisions handed down against Trump’s EO. As the rulings were issued it became clear””because of the liberal judges’ reliance on Trump’s supposed thoughtcrime, as evidenced in some of his campaign statements””that no subsequent EO of Trump’s on immigration that involved any majority Muslim country would ever be held constitutional by these judges, no matter how carefully and fairly drafted. Trump had committed the original sin during the campaign, and all the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten that little hand.
In other words, the order itself was probably perfectly fine, but it was Trump’s prior campaign statements that made the judges suspicious of it. Thoughtcrime.
So now Robert Mueller is intent on finding more Trumpian thoughtcrime [emphasis mine]:
A president should not be subjected to prosecutorial scrutiny over poor judgment, venality, bad taste, or policy disputes. Absent concrete evidence that the president has committed a serious crime, the checks on the president should be Congress and the ballot box ”” and the civil courts, to the extent that individuals are harmed by abusive executive action. Otherwise, a special-counsel investigation ”” especially one staffed by the president’s political opponents ”” is apt to become a thinly veiled political scheme, enabling the losers to relitigate the election and obstruct the president from pursuing the agenda on which he ran.
That is what we are now witnessing…
The list of [Mueller’s questions for Trump] elucidates that Mueller is pursuing the legally suspect theory that legitimate exercises of presidential prerogatives can become prosecutable obstruction crimes if undertaken with an arguably corrupt motive. This theory is specious on at least two grounds.
First, it would empower a subordinate executive official (an unelected bureaucrat who serves at the president’s pleasure) to second-guess the chief executive’s every action and judgment ”” not just to investigate a patent, serious crime but to question what the president was thinking even when his actions were within his constitutional authority. The president is answerable to peer branches and to voters, but not down his chain of command. If an order is lawful, it is not the captain’s place to question the general’s motives.
Second, the corrupt-motive theory is factually meritless as applied to Trump. Whatever pressure Trump may have brought to bear regarding Flynn’s investigation, it had zero impact. Comey has testified that the FBI disregarded Trump’s comments. The Flynn investigation proceeded without a hitch, and Mueller ultimately charged and convicted him. Trump could have ordered the investigation to be shut down, but he let it continue…
We have, at most, a politicized, hyper-technical claim of obstruction that rests on a suspect legal theory and a dearth of evidence that anyone was impeded in the slightest. Those are frivolous grounds for an investigation that compromises the president’s capacity to govern. The criminal law inquires into intent when actions patently violate criminal statutes; its purpose is not to manufacture crime by speculating about the intent behind apparently lawful actions.
But even before the Mueller questions made it clear that that manufacturing crime on Trump’s part is what Mueller is trying to do, the courts already were manufacturing—if not a crime, then a claim of unconstitutionality based on the speculative intent behind apparently lawful actions. So, that horse has already left the barn, unless a SCOTUS decision puts it firmly back in again. And as far as I know, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the merits of that aspect of the lower courts’ decisions.
As I have pointed out here before, Trump’s advent has flushed out all sorts of people and attitudes that we might have had suspicions about before, but which have now been revealed in all their florid glory; in this case, the courts.
Courts and judges here and there around the country have made a series of patently unlawful and illogical rulings against Trump and his policies that have nothing to do with following our Constitution, the law, and precedent, but which have everything to do with their Leftist ideology.
They’ve cited legal principles where there are none, and just made up crap out of thin air.
Talk about lawlessness, and judicial overreach, this is it.
If Mueller charges djt or if this investigation collapses under the heavy weight of its blatant attempt to reverse an election; there will be blood in the streets. The branch of government responsible for determining what falls under the rule of the law has become lawless.
I think the non-lawyers among the general public, of which I am one, understand this point, and it is why I suspect it was a Trump ally that leaked the questions to the public. Should Trump refuse to sit down with Mueller to be interviewed, or at minimum dictates which questions he will or will not respond to, a majority of the public will understand why and accept that action because they see the questions as inappropriate.
At what point would a President be obligated to declare martial law and then fire and arrest Americans both public and private who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be a clear and present danger to the republic?
Geoffrey Britain Says:
May 3rd, 2018 at 4:41 pm
At what point would a President be obligated to declare martial law and then fire and arrest Americans both public and private who have repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be a clear and present danger to the republic?
* * *
Five minutes after Hillary Clinton had won the election.
From the Wiki link on Thoughtcrime, the Left is well along on teaching people how to do Crimestop, especially in the Universities.
“”Crimestop” means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts immediately, i.e., thoughts that interfere or disagree with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime.
In the novel, we hear about crimestop through the eyes of protagonist Winston Smith:
The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions–’the Party says the earth is flat’, ‘the party says that ice is heavier than water’–and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.
Orwell also describes crimestop from the perspective of Emmanuel Goldstein in the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism:
Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.[5]”
AesopFan,
There’s no doubt that she planned on arresting all of the “deplorables and iredeemables” who compose the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against which she has fought her entire adult life…
The difference of course is that we on the right (even RINOs) and including Trump, do not wish to extinguish the Constitution.
Again, at what point do we face the fact that the Left is bringing knives to our former fist fight?
How stupid and shortsighted the left are wanting to give more power to the unaccountable bureaucracy than the president that they have the power to vote out.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/dershowitz-i-dont-want-to-live-in-police-state/
This is an epic rant.
I really wonder when Dersh will flip.
This seems to be the obverse side of “Hillary didn’t
commit a crime because there was no intent to do so” legal reasoning.
Tuvea Says:
May 4th, 2018 at 10:47 am
This seems to be the obverse side of “Hillary didn’t
commit a crime because there was no intent to do so” legal reasoning.
* * *
If the Left didn’t have double principles, they wouldn’t have any at all. Or so I’ve heard.
Thinking about Trump’s attempts to stop the tidal wave of illegal aliens swarming all over–basically invading and colonizing–this country, one suggestion to pay for the Wall has been to tax all the remittances that Mexicans–the vast percentage of them illegals–send back to Mexico each year.
Recent estimates for the annual amount of these remittances to Mexico have been running about $25 billion dollars each year, sucked right out of the U.S. economy, and transferred to that of Mexico, where this revenue is now Mexico’s largest single source of national revenue, eclipsing even the revenue Mexico gets from it’s petroleum exports.
But that’s just Mexicans.
Now comes a new estimate from PEW that the total amount of all remittances sent by immigrants–and you can bet a lot of them are illegals–back to their home countries each year is an astronomical amount, a staggering $136 billion dollars–again sucked right out of the U.S. economy, and transferred to the economies of other countries.
Immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, are a huge net loss economically for the U.S.
One recent estimate is that the 11 million or so illegals in the U.S. cost Federal and State governments around $136 billion each year in extra costs, while these illegals pay only an estimated $19 Billion in state and Federal taxes. Thus, their illegal presence here in the U.S. costa us citizens and taxpayers an estimated net of $116 billion each year in extra expenses.
Now, add to that $116 billion the $136 billion in remittances.
Thus, the actual cost to the U.S. because of illegal’s presence here in the U.S. is more like $200 or $250 billion each year.
Can you imagine what the U.S. could do with–what benefit there could be for U.S. citizens and taxpayers–if we didn’t have to pay out that extra S200 or $250 billion dollars each year because of all the illegals here?