As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Over
... Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.
The letter goes on to urge all DOJ employees to follow the example of the four prosecutors who withdrew from the Stone case (one resigning from DOJ), and report future abuses to the DOJ Inspector General and other oversight organizations.Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies. (our emphasis)
The Washington Post has a feature article about how Trump's rhetoric has affected how children are harassed and bullied at school:
Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.
Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.
The Bully- In- Chief, a Giant Toddler himself, is changing our country for the worse in so many ways, but perhaps most disturbingly in how his viciousness is being normalized by young children. That Third Lady Melon Trump has the anti- bullying "Be Best" campaign as her focus makes it a dark, cosmic joke.Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated. (our emphasis)
Sticking with the topic, the Post editorializes this morning about the homophobic bullying of Pete Buttigieg by the likes of sick slob Oxycontin Rush Limbaugh:
The most prominent, to date, has been Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, whose enthusiasm for public predation makes him a strong contender for the title of America’s No. 1 bully. Mr. Limbaugh, who wears his sexism, racism, nativism and assorted other bigotries as badges of honor — he once invited an African American caller to “take that bone out of your nose” — last week sneered that Mr. Buttigieg “loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage.”
Forewarned is forearmed. As you might guess, the Red Hat Cult plans an all- out voter suppression/ voter fraud "program":The Trump presidency has been a heyday for bullies at home and abroad — for schoolyard tormentors who have weaponized the president’s odious rhetoric against their Hispanic and black classmates; for tyrants around the world ever more emboldened to threaten dissidents and intimidate journalists. Could there be any clearer sign that malice is in official favor than Mr. Trump using the occasion of the State of the Union speech to honor Mr. Limbaugh, around whose neck first lady Melania Trump hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Could there be anyone more antithetical to the purported goal of Mrs. Trump’s “Be Best” anti-bullying campaign? (our emphasis)
The 2020 election will be the first in decades in which the Republican National Committee will not be constrained by a Reagan-era court order that prohibited “ballot security” measures to intimidate nonwhite voters. The Democratic National Committee had sued to halt the intimidation, after the GOP had deployed off-duty police officers wearing “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands to New Jersey polling stations. Some of these poll watchers were visibly armed.
According to a leaked recording of a Trump campaign official, Trump is all in on the “voter fraud” theme this year. “We’ve got a guy that’s committed to this, who is able to short-circuit media attention on stuff,” said Trump campaign senior counsel Justin Clark last November to a meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association in Madison, Wisconsin. “Let’s start playing offense a little bit. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”
The “program” relies on Trump’s talent for “raising the profile of issues that come up,” as Clark put it. If lawyerly euphemism is not your native tongue, here’s a translation: Trump will foment hysteria about voter fraud — “the issues that come up” — to justify GOP suppression tactics, AKA the “program.”Your "Party of Trump" ladies and gentlemen. We've got to burn it down to the ground, then salt the earth over it.
Finally, we strongly recommend a visit to Infidel 753's link round- up for his usual eclectic collection of "interesting stuff." You should also check out his post on what he expects, and doesn't expect, to occur during the rest of the 21st Century, mostly through technological progress and social change.
