by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
Even as President Biden shrugged his shoulders over progressives’ harassment and intimidation of a sitting United States senator of his own party — a crime under Arizona law — Biden’s Justice Department was running roughshod over the First Amendment, threatening to investigate and prosecute parents for protesting against school boards and teachers who insist on indoctrinating children with the cultural Marxism beloved by Democrats.
On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memorandum in which he wailed about the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” Clearing his throat with an empty nod to the inconvenient fact that the Constitution protects “spirited debate,” Garland incorrectly — indeed, outrageously for someone of his experience as a Justice Department official and federal appellate judge — claimed that free-speech principles yield not only to “threats of violence” but also to “efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views” (at least, evidently, individuals not named Sinema or Manchin).
Garland knows this is dangerous nonsense. I personally know that he knows it. He was a high-ranking official in the Clinton Justice Department, which gave me a very hard time — though it ultimately relented — when I proposed charging a notorious terrorist with soliciting acts of violence and seditious conspiracy.
We had elaborate evidence, much of it in the form of recorded statements, showing that Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman believed himself to be in a forcible war against the United States, that his followers had carried out and plotted terrorist attacks, and that he had personally called for both bombings of American military installations and the murder of Egypt’s then-president.
Yet, with the Clinton administration under pressure from left-wing and Islamist groups aligned with the Democratic Party, I was darkly cautioned about the inviolable carapace of free expression and the imperative to avoid “chilling” speech by conflating criminal incitement with constitutionally protected rhetoric that expressed hatred for America — even rhetoric that bitterly attacked American officials and insisted that our governing system should be supplanted.
Garland well knows, as he and Clinton officials stressed to me nearly 30 years ago, that in the incitement context, the First Amendment protects speech unless it unambiguously calls for the use of force that the speaker clearly intends, under circumstances in which the likelihood of violence is real and imminent. Even actual “threats of violence” are not actionable unless they meet this high threshold.
A fortiori, the First Amendment fully protects speech evincing “efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.” As long as such speech does not constitute a clear and imminent threat to do violence if the individual acts on his or her views, there is no incitement — and hence no law-enforcement interest to vindicate.
And in particular, there is no federal law-enforcement interest to vindicate. Under the congressional statute criminalizing incitement (section 373 of the penal law, “Solicitation to commit a crime of violence”), even an actual threat of violence is not actionable unless the speaker has called for “physical force against property or against the person of another in violation of the laws of the United States” (emphasis added).
Hitler,Stalin,Castro and Mao did just about the very same thing when it came to Brainwashing the kids Enviromentlaism and CRT effective forms of Brainwashing
Biden IS the unelected asshat tyrant that they kept saying Trump was.
Exactly, biden is everything they said President Trump was except in the case of the dolt biden, the worst fears for this country are right in front of our eyes.
bidens polling is so bad a majority of real Americans would prefer President Trump in office right now.
BIDEN EFFECT: Average Family is Spending $175 More per Month on Basic Essentials Today
Oct 7, 2021 – Senate report details Trump’s efforts to use DOJ to overturn election results
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An interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee provides the most detailed look yet at former President Trump’s attempts to enlist the Justice Department in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The report from the panel’s Democratic majority documents the chaotic final weeks of Trump’s presidency following his loss to Joe Biden, and how Trump tried to force Justice Department officials to help him keep his grip on power.
Department leaders ultimately resisted Trump’s pressure, but it took threats of mass resignations across the department to get him to back down.
A key moment that emerges in the report is a Jan. 3 meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and senior Justice Department leaders, including then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his top deputy, Richard Donoghue.
Rosen told the committee that Trump opened the three-hour meeting by saying: “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”
Trump was already considering replacing Rosen with a lower-ranking department official, Jeffrey Clark, who was promising to pursue Trump’s false election fraud claims.
Rosen and his deputies refused to endorse Trump’s claims, and pushed back against the president’s proposed scheme to dump Rosen for Clark.
>>>The report says Donoghue and others made clear that all of the department’s assistant attorneys general would resign if Trump went forward with the scheme, and that mass resignations likely wouldn’t end there. <<<
Rosen and Donoghue, who were both interviewed by the committee, said White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and another top White House lawyer, Patrick Philbin, also pushed back against Trump's plan, and threatened to quit as well.
The report says Trump continued to entertain the idea of installing Clark at the helm of the Justice Department, and only abandoned the idea at the end of the Oval Office meeting.
The meeting was one of several ways in which Trump sought to pressure the Justice Department to pursue his election fraud claims.
Ultimately, Trump's efforts failed, though he continues to push lies that the election was stolen.
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https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1044015379/senate-report-details-trumps-efforts-to-use-doj-to-overturn-election-results
Npr
National pubic radio.
Another bastion of lies and propaganda
Senate Minority Report Exonerates Trump Of Weaponizing DOJ Over Election Results
https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/07/senate-minority-report-exonerates-trump-of-weaponizing-doj-over-election-results/
“More accuse the other side of doing what you just got caught doing”
Dismissed.
The media is floundering to cover up Biden’s very blatant failures and complete inability.
So we go back to the failed “Trump was trying to rig the election, not us!”
The ultimate reason that Biden is failing is because he wasn’t elected.
I trust the American people to decide on who our president is instead of Eric Coomer.
Ted Cruz destroys some bozo from DOJ
Why don’t you get back to us when you have some facts. We’re tired of your left wing conspiracies.
Americans Give biden Lowest Marks Across The Board,
Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds;
Majority Say The biden Administration Is Not Competent
I don’t trust polls, but it’s interesting that even the baked poles can’t cover for Biden.
We all know 38% probably means closer to 28% or less.
Unfortunately for him this isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a confident executive contest.
Trump was an is better. These FBI and bureaucrat led smears won’t stop him from regaining the White House.
“Trump Won! – Let’s Go Brandon!” – Trump Supporters Line Up to Greet Biden as He Arrives in Elk Grove, Illinois
Note to Donald Trump: You HAVE NO executive privilege because you are no longer Chief Executive.
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Oct 7, 2021 – Trump to use executive privilege to block Jan. 6 subpoenas:
Former President Donald Trump will use executive privilege to block subpoenas from the House committee investigating the storming of the U.S. Capitol building, a new report says.
The subpoenas, issued Sept. 23, have a Thursday deadline to comply or face “criminal referrals.” Trump will instead invoke executive privilege, a power he retains over events that occurred during his administration despite leaving office, to protect a handful of former aides from divulging information about Jan. 6, Grant Stinchfield from Newsmax reported Wednesday.
“He is going to invoke executive privilege, and that means that people like Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; Dan Scavino, a top adviser; and Kash Patel, another top adviser, will not be able to comply with these subpoenas coming from the Jan. 6 commission,” Stinchfield said. “This is what you get with President Trump. You get a man who fights back. That’s what we love about President Trump, and he’s sticking it to these people trying to go after him.”
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Stenchfield must be a complete idiot.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-executive-privilege-block-jan-164700741.html
Your president has a paltry approval of only 38%. 55% of Americans disapprove of your president. Your president is 17 points under water to the negative. No President in modern polling history has ever had numbers go this low in the first 9 months.
Your president sucks and the majority of the country and the world knows that.
If Trump asked me to do something, and Biden asked me to do something…I’d follow Trump.
Is that lack of executive authority?
Sooner or later you need to understand that the Federal Government if afforded power by we the people. If I don’t think Biden won a free and fair election, that’s a problem for him
I am under no compulsion to follow a government I think it illegitimate, and can easily withdraw my consent for them to govern.
If they “attack” me, then they are officially autocratic.
It must be said and said often; thank GOD this fascist was not allowed to become a Supreme Court Justice. I knew nothing about Garland when Obama nominated him, but I knew if Obama nominated him, he was deeply flawed. This is terrible.
But, the left has lost all sight of how our government is supposed to behave because the proper operation of our government does not allow for the left to behave how they want to behave. For instance, just the other day, Bernie, infuriated because his gigantic socialistic transformation of the United States is being held at bay by two Democrats. Bernie stated Manchin and Sinema “have no right” to stand in the way of his socialist agenda.
What a goddamn idiot! They absolutely DO have the right, indeed the DUTY, to vote in a way they believe their constituents would want them to vote. Now, I’m not personally convince of their righteousness in their motives, but regardless they still have the right to vote however they want; the voters hold them accountable.
The left does not want to follow the Constitution. They crave a totalitarian police state and occasionally they practice it. Their most basic belief is that other people do not have the right to disagree with their agenda and ideology. Komrad Garland epitomizes this mindset.
REVEALED: Letter with Insider Information Shows the Teachers Union, AG Merrick Garland and the FBI’s Plan to Monitor Parents was a Political Setup for Midterms
Is Garland’s Parental Terrorist order for the benefit of his family, not yours?
https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/is-garlands-parental-terrorist-order-for-the-benefit-of-his-family-not-yours-140614/
20 years ago when the leftist plutocrat pushed the unpatriotic “PA” conservatives said, CORRECTLY, GWB intends to persecute us with this law. This is just the latest , of many, example of how Bush hates conservatives. No shock that the “Bush Republican” 8 months ago pushed Garland saying “he was a well grounded moderate”. Naming Bush Republican name “Turtle”!
Uniparty is the far left of BOTH BIG PARTIES. AG is using the tool that GWB crafted! AGAINST CONSERVATIVES, as we said 20 years ago!
Belated disclaimer:
Have been conservative for over 70 years. Never voted for GWB. Boased I am.
SIC SEMPTER TYRANUS BIDEN