Law-breaking in Today’s News
Today’s news contains two stories on the subject of law-breaking.
The Extinction Rebellion is a recently formed movement that deploys nonviolent resistance to avert climate breakdown, halt biodiversity loss, and minimize the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse. London is the center of civil disobedience aimed at urging the British government to take important steps to respect climate change; protesters demand that their leaders begin by telling the British people the truth about the science, rather than acting as a conduit for the disinformation campaigns of the fossil fuel industry. Non-violent (but severely disruptive) protests in England, supported by groups in 50 other countries around the globe, have resulted in mass arrests.
Across the Atlantic, the U.S. president offered pardons to members of his administration who intentionally break the law at his behest, destroying any remaining notion of rule of law here in America. It’s possible that similar acts have been carried out covertly and tacitly in the past, but most Americans found it shocking to watch this happen in broad daylight, and, worse, without any real push-back from Trump’s congressional allies. Those of us who held out some hope for the restoration of U.S. democracy were deeply saddened. We remember when America stood for something; those days seem to be far behind us.
Craig,
Unfortunately, like so many leftist inspired similar movements like “occupy Wall Street” etc, these noisy, selfish demonstrations have little effect on public opinion except to further alienate ordinary people.
The movement consists of a small group of the “usual suspects”.
These consist of a diverse coalition of activists with only a very fuzzy grasp of science and an even fuzzier grasp of any real objectives. Their main objective being showing off in a disruptive, but ultimately pointless display of self-gratification.
As for the rest of your assertions, President Trump has so far used the power granted in the article of the Constitution modestly and with considerable restraint. (the exception being a pardon for Joe Arpaio, which could be put down to a mistake by newly elected non-politician President).
The Constitution places no restriction, or conditions, on the President’s power to issue pardons for Federal offenses.
Presidential Pardons are defined in Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution as : “The President shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
In response to legal challenges the U.S. Supreme Court interpretation extended the definition to include include the granting of pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties.
From the time of Lincoln, Presidential pardons have been recognized as being within the exclusive purview of the President without reference to anyone other than themselves.
Craig, if just once you criticized the rank hypocrisy, corruption, or plain silliness of Democrat and leftist politicians, you might gain more credibility.
As it stands, you obsession with invective and abuse toward the President and his supporters appears even more unhinged, than the mad rants of CNN, NYT etc.
What does all this ranting achieve? When Nancy Pelosi attacks the Attorney-General for simply doing his job, what is achieved?
She knows no responsible Attorney-General could release a report which contains material which compromises either national security or grand jury testimony.
These provisions are safeguards for citizens against the sort of abuses of procedural power witnessed during the McCarthy era.
The attacks on the President have grown increasingly bizarre and frantic as all the manufactured scandals fall apart or exposed as FBI, CIA malfeasance.
In many ways President Trump is certainly not an ideal President. His sometimes brash manner and awkward phrasing make him a target for those who yearn for a more spin doctored, polished President.
However, those faults don’t disqualify him from holding office, or limit his capacity to be an effective President.
Therein lies the dilemma for his opponents. President Trump is a surprisingly effective President in many aspects of his administration, exposing all the early hysteria, for what it was, hysteria.
His foreign policy has proved both retrained and highly effective. The President’s economic initiatives have proved the most successful since Reagan. He keeps his election promises to a degree unparalleled by modern Presidents.
President Trump has survived the most unprecedented, biased media attack in modern history, by deploying an astute use of social media.
Politically, his greatest technique is provoking opponents to make increasingly crazy, excessive, extreme demands and wild claims, which all look absurd once the furor and dust settles.
By forcing his opponents into becoming extremists, he’s able to achieve two objectives. The first drives his opponents into supporting an extremist, hypocritical agenda, this allows the President to achieve his second objective by moving back to the political centre, leaving his opponents exposed as biased, ranting, hypocrites who couldn’t be trusted in office.
The latest provocation by the President brought the desired result. Democrats were forced to support the concept of “Sanctuary Cities” for illegal migrants.
Despite careful avoidance of the term “illegal migrants” or illegal aliens”, by the mainstream press (it’s always just ‘migrants’), suddenly the focus returned to illegal migration and “open borders”.
Moderate Democrats were caught flat-footed. Clearly the nation doesn’t support “open borders”, yet suddenly, tDemocrats were forced to admit a border crises does exist, and not just an ‘invention’ by the President.
In one hit, he has strengthened his fairly weak case to use Executive power to circumvent the lower house control of finance, while firmly identifying in the public mind the Democrats as supporting open borders.
Suddenly the image of the attractive, idealistic, compassionate young woman demonstrator in San Fransisco, holding a sign saying “Sanctuary for all” , is no longer “progressive” or “cool”.
Democrat politicians are caught on the horns of a dilemma ! No matter how they wriggle, they discover they’ve been forced to either support an unpopular, extreme position, or be exposed as a weaseling hypocrite.
President accomplished by the coup, not by any real policy or action, but by his musings on Twitter.
Angry reactions by Mayors and leading Democrats demanding law suits against the President only added to the confusion and absurdity.
Once again the President displayed an astute cunning for bringing out the worst in his opponents.
President Trump may not be the sort of ‘noble’ President so beloved of Hollywood and progressive TV shows, but he’s proven himself to be a quick learner and formidable street fighter in both domestic and foreign politics.