As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Over
1,100 2,000 former Justice Department officials
have signed an open letter denouncing
Attorney General Trump attorney
William "Low" Barr's interference in criminal cases, specifically in the sentencing recommendation for long- time Trump/ Republican ratfucker
Roger Stone. Here's part of their statement:
... 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.
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.”
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)
Forewarned is forearmed. As you might guess,
the Red Hat Cult plans an all- out voter suppression/ voter fraud "program":
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.
