Tea at Trianon: Is Collusion Criminal?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 13, 2018

Is Collusion Criminal?

From Ben Shapiro:

Technically, collusion isn't a crime. There is no statutory definition of "collusion"; the closest we could come is "conspiracy." So let's be more specific: Would it be criminal activity if the Trump campaign solicited opposition research from the Russian government? The short answer: Not clearly, unless the campaign was also involved in underlying criminal activity, such as hacking the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton campaign. UCLA professor of law Eugene Volokh explained in the Washington Post last year that barring such activity, it seems violative of the First Amendment to prevent campaigns from talking with foreign citizens about opposition research on other candidates. After all, Clinton's team paid Fusion GPS to create an opposition-research dossier, much of the material provided by a foreign citizen, Christopher Steele. Even exchanging information with the Russian government wouldn't clearly violate the law, if Volokh is correct. (Read more.)