The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

This goes back to our earlier discussion about the presumption of regularity. I just don't see the problem with a new administration deciding not to defend the bad actions of the preceding administration. The president and attorney general can't hurt people just because they feel like it -- and that principle is what's at stake here.

And consider this: following the crowd control measures that were used to clear Lafayette Park so Trump could have his photo op, the official line was that tear gas was not used. But just yesterday, an attorney representing D.C. police admitted that was not true. Almost a year later.

Lying about what happened shows consciousness of guilt. They knew what they did was wrong. What else are they still covering up?

Trump and Barr gassed people on a whim. They wanted to hurt people. Trump even praised the brutality shortly after it happened. That's indefensible, and that's what they're being sued for. The Dept. of Justice should say, "Those actions were wrong, and we're not going to defend them because they have nothing to do with protecting the President."

The Inspector General for the Department of the Interior has issued a report about the events of that day. Some media outlets understandably are emphasizing the I.G. determination that U.S. Park Police decided on their own to clear the park without being directed to by the White House or Dept. of Justice, and that the park would have been cleared even if the President weren't planning his photo op, because the Park Police were planning to install a fence that evening. Obviously if that's true, it would seriously undermine my assessment above. If so, I will admit my mistake -- although I seem to recall the White House saying at the time that Attorney General Barr had ordered the park to be cleared.

But speaking of Barr: he wasn't interviewed for this report. Neither were Secret Service officials, who would know about what requests were made for the President's security, and when they were made. Nor was anyone not part of the park service who took part in clearing the park, like Bureau of Prisons staff, interviewed for the report. Even so, in the report as published today, there is a quote attributed to Barr by a park police official that indicates that Barr at least strongly encouraged the park to be cleared (think Henry II) when he walked through about an hour before it was cleared. And there are a couple redactions in the report that appear to pertain to the subject of how it was determined that the park needed to be cleared.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I would be very skeptical of a determination that the clearing of the park had nothing to do with Trump's photo op at the church.

[N.E. Brigand]

I would be very skeptical of a determination that the clearing of the park had nothing to do with Trump's photo op at the church.

Another reason to be skeptical: U.S. Park Police officials say that radio transmissions from that day should have been recorded.

But they weren't.

Will no one rid me of these turbulent protesters?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As Justice Powell wrote, I know it when I see it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I guess I'll put this here. While it is good that this is happening, I fight it utterly remarkable and extremely disappointing that this is the case.

Senate confirms Zahid Quraishi as first Muslim American federal judge in US history

It is beyond belief that among the thousands of federal judges that have been nominated and confirmed in our nations history, not one of them before Judge Quraishi was Muslim.

[N.E. Brigand]

I would be very skeptical of a determination that the clearing of the park had nothing to do with Trump's photo op at the church.

Another reason to be skeptical: U.S. Park Police officials say that radio transmissions from that day should have been recorded.

But they weren't.

Will no one rid me of these turbulent protesters?

Glenn Greenwald says the media is ignoring this Inspector General report (which he says it "as credible as it gets") because it doesn't blame Donald Trump.

I guess these articles don't exist:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-202 ... 1623280982
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/10048323 ... rump-last-
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 622478002/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/politics ... index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/police- ... d=78171712
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-phot ... rs-report/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/us/p ... quare.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... te-square/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/1 ... p-photo-op
https://www.axios.com/lafayette-park-pr ... 13e7f.html

(And that's just from the first of multiple pages of Google News results.)

Also, as this observer notes, a key point in the report is that, "contrary to the operational plan," and just six minutes after William Barr toured the park and complained that the protesters were still there, the Secret Service deployed to disperse the protesters before the Park Police were ready to do so. One Park Police administrator said that a Secret Service official later apologized to him for that having happened -- but no one interviewed in the report seems to knows why it happened. And as I noted yesterday, the I.G. didn't interview anyone in the Secret Service, and the parts of the report that might shed some light on this decision are redacted.

[N.E. Brigand]

There have been a lot of complaints from the media about how Joe Biden hasn't held more press conferences. Setting aside the fact that in his first solo press conference, reporters asked him some pretty dumb questions, what are we to make of the fact that today President Biden held his second solo press conference, and...

...none of the three American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, or NBC, carried it live?

[N.E. Brigand]

There is a fairly good chance of Republicans retaking the Senate (and the House) in the 2022 elections. The President's party usually loses seats in Congressional midterm elections, and Democrats currently have a very narrow margin in the House and no margin at all in the Senate.

Today, Mitch McConnell said that if Republicans control the Senate in 2023 and there's a vacancy on the Supreme Court, even if Joe Biden nominates a moderate, he can't say for sure that the Senate would hold a confirmation vote for that person.

[Frelga]

It's a civil war.

[Dave_LF]

If only the one side would actually fight back

[Frelga]

Then we'd have to stop pretending that it's business as usual.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

So, with Bill Barr out, and Jeffrey Rosen elevated to Acting Attorney General (despite having no previous prosecutorial experience at all), will we see a spate of special counsels appointed to cause more chaos for the Biden administration?

I must say, I was wrong about Jeffrey Rosen. He is emerging as an unlikely hero of sorts.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/15/politics ... index.html

[N.E. Brigand]

So, with Bill Barr out, and Jeffrey Rosen elevated to Acting Attorney General (despite having no previous prosecutorial experience at all), will we see a spate of special counsels appointed to cause more chaos for the Biden administration?

I must say, I was wrong about Jeffrey Rosen. He is emerging as an unlikely hero of sorts.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/15/politics ... index.html

To me, Jeffrey Rosen seems more like Don McGahn.

Cowards both.

Edited to add:

It may be to Jeffrey Rosen's credit that as Attorney General he refused Donald Trump's request that the Dept. of Justice file a lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to throw out the results from multiple states. But it is to Rosen's shame that as Deputy Attorney General two weeks earlier, when the White House sent the Dept. of Justice some files baselessly alleging election fraud in Michigan, Rosen sent it on to two U.S. Attorneys in Michigan to investigate.

When Donald Trump asked Jeffrey Rosen to attempt to help him overturn the election, it was Rosen's moral responsility to refuse, and then to resign, and then to publicly state and condemn what the President asked him to do.

But even in recent Congressional testimony, Rosen was asked, "Prior to January 6, were you asked or instructed by President Trump to take any action at the Department to advance election fraud claims or to seek to overturn any part of the 2020 election results?"

And Rosen's answer was "I can tell you what the actions of the Department were or what the outcome was. I cannot tell you, consistent with my obligrations today, about private conversations with the President one way or the other."

That is a cowardly and immoral answer. Because of Donald Trump's deeds, any privilege had become void, and the oath was vain.

The correct answer would have been: "Yes, and here is what the President asked me to do ... I knew what he was asking was wrong, and I refused to engage in the most egregious acts requested by the White House while going along with some of the less awful but still improper acts I was asked to do. I now realize that I should have resigned and made a public statement denouncing the President's actions at the time. Had I done so, perhaps the President would not have been in a position to launch a violent insurrection at the Capitol that was meant to overthrow the lawfully-elected incoming United States government."

[N.E. Brigand]

Can Georgia state prosecutors investigating Donald Trump's attempts to illegally interfere in the election in their state subpoena internal U.S. Dept. of Justice documents and get the testimony of officials like Rosen now that we know that Trump told the DOJ to file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court that would throw out the votes in Georgia (and five other states)?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't see why they could not issue such a subpoena. Whether they would, and whether it would be enforceable, are two different questions.

[N.E. Brigand]

That is a cowardly and immoral answer. Because of Donald Trump's deeds, any privilege had become void, and the oath was vain.

Just so there's no confusion: I am not saying that Jeffrey Rosen should throw himself into a volcano.

But I am saying he should sing.

[N.E. Brigand]

Vladimir Putin, today (per two different translations):

"In life there is no happiness. There is only the specter of happiness."

"There is no happiness in life, there is only a mirage on the horizon, so cherish that."

[N.E. Brigand]

Earlier this week, the publishers and top editors at several major media outlets met with the Dept. of Justice to push for better treatment of the press, in response to recent revelations about how DOJ had obtained subpoenas for reporters' records in the course of leak investigations (investigations that may have been politically motivated). There were some calls this week among other journalists for those media bigwigs to use the meeting as an opportunity to demand that the Justice Dept. drop its charges against Julian Assange, on the grounds that he too is a journalist deserving the freedoms afforded by the First Amendment.

I agree that sometimes, perhaps even usually, the work that Assange has done is legitimate journalism of the same basic kind as the New York Times publication of the Pentagon Papers, which were illegally leaked to them by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, and I am concerned that successful prosecution of some of the crimes that the U.S. initially charged Assange with could have a chilling effect on the free press. But as shown in this analysis, which helpfully quotes from the relevant paragraphs of the decision a few months ago by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the U.K. (which denied the U.S. extradition request on compassionate grounds: the judge ruled that U.S. prison conditions are too harsh for a person in Assange's mental condition), Assange's actions went beyond just receiving and publishing materials. He provided potential hackers with instructions and tools. That would be like the Times in 1971 giving Ellsberg a stolen key to the file cabinet where the Pentagon Papers were stored, or the Times surveilling the office where the cabinet was located and telling Ellsberg that the night watchman took a coffee break away from his post each evening at 10:30 p.m.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Earlier this week, the publishers and top editors at several major media outlets met with the Dept. of Justice to push for better treatment of the press, in response to recent revelations about how DOJ had obtained subpoenas for reporters' records in the course of leak investigations (investigations that may have been politically motivated). There were some calls this week among other journalists for those media bigwigs to use the meeting as an opportunity to demand that the Justice Dept. drop its charges against Julian Assange, on the grounds that he too is a journalist deserving the freedoms afforded by the First Amendment.

I agree that sometimes, perhaps even usually, the work that Assange has done is legitimate journalism of the same basic kind as the New York Times publication of the Pentagon Papers, which were illegally leaked to them by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, and I am concerned that successful prosecution of some of the crimes that the U.S. initially charged Assange with could have a chilling effect on the free press. But as shown in this analysis, which helpfully quotes from the relevant paragraphs of the decision a few months ago by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the U.K. (which denied the U.S. extradition request on compassionate grounds: the judge ruled that U.S. prison conditions are too harsh for a person in Assange's mental condition), Assange's actions went beyond just receiving and publishing materials. He provided potential hackers with instructions and tools. That would be like the Times in 1971 giving Ellsberg a stolen key to the file cabinet where the Pentagon Papers were stored, or the Times surveilling the office where the cabinet was located and telling Ellsberg that the night watchman took a coffee break away from his post each evening at 10:30 p.m.

[N.E. Brigand]

"In life there is no happiness. There is only the specter of happiness."

"There is no happiness in life, there is only a mirage on the horizon, so cherish that."

Julia Ioffe says that Putin was quoting Tolstoy.

- - - - - - - - - - -
And speaking of authors, the Biden administration has dropped the federal government's lawsuit against John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump's national security advisor from Apr. 2018 to Sep. 2019. Bolton's memoir, The Room Where It Happened, included information about Trump's actions in the Ukraine scandal that had led to his first impeachment in Dec. 2019. Even some legal observers who disapproved of Trump felt that the government had a decent suit against Bolton for having published classified material without permission. And yet in a way, this seems to be another case of the Biden administration protecting the Trump administration, because continuing the litigation could have led to material being revealed in the discovery process that probably would expose yet more wrongdoing (or at least embarrassing behavior) by the former president and his staff.