I suppose this transformation of journalism into imaginative fiction was bound to happen sooner or later. All the elements were in place. One party — the Democrats — controls both the news industry and the entertainment industry. The same party is convinced that human nature, moral truth and reality itself can be transformed by transforming the stories we tell about them. And for eight years, that party and its media tried to prove that point by telling us a story about Barack Obama. He wasn’t a Chicago machine hack who knew jack-all about how foreign policy and the economy work. No, he was, in fact, the “next messiah,” a “light-worker,” “above the country, above the world… sort of God,” in the words of various journos.
But now, reality, as is it's wont, is reasserting itself. And in reality, we find that even mean, nasty, very bad Orange Man Donald Trump can do a better job of being president than Obama ever could. What’s more, it is slowly coming to light that Obama, who abused the IRS to silence his opponents and the State Department to cover up his mistakes, may have also turned the Justice Department into a political weapon. Which means the “next messiah” was even meaner, nastier, very-badder and more unconstitutional than Orange Man Trump has even thought to be.
Well, what can the Democrats do under the circumstances but put on a show and hope their news and entertainment media can sell it to the public? The result is the bizarre make-believe crisis the Democrats are acting out in Congress and the even more bizarre reporting of that make-believe crisis as if it were somehow real life. (Read more.)
From The National Review:
To review the plot: Robert Mueller conducted what was in effect an impeachment inquiry from within the executive branch for two years. In defiance of the spirit of the special-counsel regulations, he wrote a long, detailed narrative account of what his investigation found, even though he didn’t accuse the president of a crime (he did, however, “not exonerate” the president on obstruction, a bastard concept hitherto unknown to American law).
Nothing in the regulations required Attorney General Bill Barr to release any of the report, let alone release it in its entirety. He did anyway with minimal, entirely defensible redactions that the DOJ worked through with Mueller. He then testified for hours in public before a Senate committee about his handling of the report, while declining to appear for more voluntary testimony before a House committee the next day over a process issue (the committee wanted a counsel to question Barr; the attorney general objected, likely because he didn’t like the optics).
Collectively, then, and often working at cross-purposes, the Trump administration has done Congress an enormous favor the last two years. It appointed a special counsel; not only let him finish his work, but cooperated with him (despite Trump’s ineffectual scheming against the investigation); didn’t object to his writing a narrative for public and especially congressional consumption; and with only a brief delay handed the full report, signed, sealed, and delivered, over to Congress to potentially to use as a roadmap for impeachment. (And, oh yeah, the report has been published as a book and is being sold on Amazon.) Most of Jerry Nadler’s work has been done for him. (Read more.)
From The Conservative Review:
On Sunday night’s episode of “Life, Liberty & Levin,” constitutional scholar and Chapman University law professor John Eastman told LevinTV host Mark Levin how special counsel Robert Mueller’s report turns the idea of justice upside down. Eastman was the author of legal analysis that challenged the idea of automatic birthright citizenship under the Constitution that became a point of controversy during the Trump presidential campaign.
Eastman agreed with Levin that the second part of the Mueller report dealing with obstruction of justice issues is a “bunch of crap.” He went on to explain how the report even got the presumption of innocence wrong in dealing with the president.
“[Mueller] said ‘I couldn’t find enough evidence to exonerate President Trump from the obstruction of justice allegations,'” Eastman pointed out. “That’s not his job as a prosecutor. The only job is to decide whether there’s enough evidence to bring an indictment with a likelihood of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“We presume innocence unless we can prove otherwise,” Eastman continued. “His report presumes guilt unless Trump can prove otherwise, and it is a fundamental altering of our very basic conceptions of justice.”
Levin and Eastman discussed the various elements that must be present to meet the minimum standard for a federal obstruction of justice charge and how that standard wasn’t remotely met by Mueller’s team. Later in the interview, Eastman also explained how Democrats’ rhetoric is undermining the principles behind the American Founding. (Read more.)Share
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