An Independent DoJ

Some pundits are complaining about a DoJ run by an Attorney General that is becoming a President Donald Trump ally rather than leading an independent Cabinet facility.

They’re misunderstanding, if not distorting, the situation.

These, for instance:

While those allies [of Attorney General William Barr] believe the attorney general’s actions are justified, they worry he is inviting excessive scrutiny that will undermine his agenda and do nothing to help the Justice Department’s already bruised morale.

Not at all. If the actions are justified, scrutiny—”excessive” or otherwise—is no excuse for not taking them.

In addition, if entrenched careerists in DoJ are unhappy with the changed corporate culture, they’re free to be unhappy on someone else’s payroll.

 

[Jonathan Turley said,] “This is a failure to consider the optics and impact of this type of announcement….”

This is not a failure at all. A major part of depoliticizing DoJ after the Eric Holder/Loretta Lynch depredations and the failures of the Jeff Sessions/Rod Rosenstein tenure is to take actions because they’re the right things to do, independently of “optics” or “impact of this type.”

 

Inside the Justice Department, Mr. Barr…is known for impatience when his orders aren’t quickly carried out.

Imagine that—insisting the Department move with all deliberate speed instead of the glacial pace of politics.

This is what independence looks like, and neither Progressive-Democrats nor deep-rooted bureaucrats like it.

“Fundamentally Transforming America”

Leftist thugs are busily tearing down statues. They began by masking their destructiveness, centering it on destroying statues of Confederate generals, but now they’re showing their true colors: they’re tearing down statues of national founders, abolitionists, Abraham Lincoln, US Grant, Liberals like Theodore Roosevelt, desecrating monuments to an all-black regiment that fought for the Union against slavery in our Civil War and to WWII heros.

They’re vandalizing government buildings and defiling churches.

They’re even assaulting their own for daring to document the destruction.

Here is Michelle Obama in May 2008:

We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.

Here is Barack Obama, just five months later and immediately before the election:

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

And now their minions are busily trying to destroy our culture and our history.

Remember this in November.

Woke, Party, and Racism

Thugs are tearing down statues of Ulysses S Grant—who fought against Democratic Party-defended slavery militarily and, as President, politically. Progressive-Democratic politicians are carefully silent about this anti-slavery move.

Why might that be?

Here’s one possibility: the then-Democratic Party’s 1868 Presidential campaign slogan as they ran against Grant was

Our ticket, Our Motto: This is a White Man’s Country; Let White Men Rule.

Which, under current Left Woke Rules, raises the question: how can any black politician be a member of the Progressive-Democratic Party? Why haven’t they been canceled?

The Party of Economic Sense

A Sunday editorial in The Wall Street Journal provides some pretty dispositive data concerning State economic behaviors during the present Wuhan Virus situation.

The baseline: the national unemployment rate for May was 13.3%.

Ten States remained above even 15% in their individual unemployment rates:

  • Nevada 25.3%
  • Hawaii 22.6%
  • Michigan 21.2%
  • California 16.3%
  • Rhode Island 16.3%
  • Massachusetts 16.3%
  • Delaware 15.8%
  • Illinois 15.2%
  • New Jersey 15.2%
  • Washington 15.1%

These States also had some of our nation’s most draconian lockdown requirements.

States with no lockdown or very light-handed stay-home instructions coupled with very early reopening include these, and their May unemployment rates:

  • Georgia 9.7%
  • Arkansas 9.5%
  • Arizona 8.9%
  • Utah 8.5%
  • Nebraska 5.2% (our nation’s lowest rate)

It’s a nearly pure Progressive-Democrat vs Republican view of the importance of economic health, and so of overall health. As with most things, though, there are a couple of exceptions.

Massachusetts, in that top-ten list of poor performance, has a Republican Governor and Lieutenant Governor, although it has Progressive-Democratic Party veto-proof majorities in both houses of the State’s legislature.

Colorado, Progressive-Democrat-run, isn’t on the list of top-five best performers, but that government ended its lockdown very early, and its unemployment rate is below the national average and falling further: from April’s 12.2% to 10.2% in May.

Notice that. The economic recovery rate is markedly improved by early release from lockdown gaol or by not locking up the citizens in the first place.

Keep in mind who has the better sense—economic, liberty, health—this November.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things—Yet

Senator Tim Scott’s (R, SC) bill that would have led to a measure of reform for our State and local police departments went down in flames at the hands of Senate Progressive-Democrats. The blocked an end to their filibuster of the bill; they refused even to let the bill come to the floor of the Senate for open debate and amendment—including their own amendments.

Their rationalization? It didn’t go far enough. So, instead of taking a compromise that moved in their direction, they blocked everything. They refused even to permit talk about it.

Progressive-Democrat contempt for us citizens isn’t confined to the Senate.

Here’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) in an interview with a CBS Radio reporter.

So, when they [Republicans]…have some suggestions that are worthy of consideration—but so far they were trying to get away with murder, actually—the murder of George Floyd.

Pelosi’s contemptuous dismissal of the concerns of Republicans in the House and the Senate Progressive-Democrats’ similar dismissal are of a piece with Progressive-Democrats’ general dismissal of all of us ordinary Americans, Americans in flyover country, Americans bitterly clinging to our Bibles and our guns, Americans who “are just no good” and irredeemable and deplorable.

Progressive-Democrats don’t consider our concerns worthy of notice, and so they will not debate, much less negotiate, in any serious fashion.

Too, Party doesn’t want any sort of solution to a problem; its members only want the problem alive and kicking for their personal political gain.

Remember this in November.