[USATODAY] Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the U.S. Attorney was using "prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion protected Lerner from the grand jury.
As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, this sets an ugly precedent. Under the Obama administration, officials are above the law — at least so long as they’re targeting Obama’s political opponents. Accountability? Rule of Law? That’s just for the little people.
And that’s the worst outcome of all. It’s not just that evidence overwhelmingly points to the IRS having been weaponized in an effort to neutralize Obama’s Tea Party opposition. It’s that ordinary Americans can look at this and conclude that there’s no reason to follow the law if they can get away with breaking it since the people in charge of enforcing the law clearly regard it with contempt.
In an influential essay several years back, Gonzalo Lira warned of the coming middle-class anarchy, when ordinary Americans decide to be no more lawful than they have to be.
There are plenty of nations that work that way — where both the ruling class and the ruled view the law with contempt and obey it only when forced to. Such places are, generally, not as nice as places where the rule of law pertains. But avoiding that kind of outcome requires principles and self-discipline on the part of the ruling class, something that contemporary America conspicuously lacks. Welcome to the era of hope and change.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/12/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
"principles and self-discipline on the part of the ruling class" What a quaint and outmoded idea.
[IBTIMES] For the last year, many of the world's governments have been trying to answer the same fiendishly difficult question: How does one defeat the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group? Airstrikes have proved insufficient. The holy warriors still occupy vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and have since moved into Libya. Attacks are no longer bound by the borders of conflict -- at least a dozen countries have seen casualties on home soil. Nearly two years since the U.S. assembled an international coalition to counter the threat from the group, also known as ISIS, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and 48 of his allied counterparts are meeting in Brussels Thursday to ask once again -- but this time, they're hoping to find an answer.
The major talking point at NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... headquarters in the Belgian capital is whether ground troops will be the next strike against ISIS. Last week, a Saudi military front man announced the kingdom -- a long-time supporter of Syrian rebel groups opposing Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... -- was willing to send ground troops into Syria. But analysts are skeptical the country will follow through without backing from the U.S., The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... and surrounding Gulf states.
"I certainly appreciate and value the Saudi willingness to engage on the ground. I think that would be a challenge for them if they try to take that on," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/12/2016 00:00 ||
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I missed an important point in yesterday's column about Russia, Turkey, and the risks of a broader war over Turkey -- but it's something I did cover over a year ago.
You see, two problems remain: Why are we stuck defending an increasingly Islamist and unreliable ally like Turkey, and why can't Europe pull its weight?
Here's what I wrote in November of 2014:
25 years ago, NATO should have thrown itself one hell of a victory party, then dissolved in the afterglow. The core states of northern and western Europe and the US could have enjoyed a less formal ĂŠntente cordiale, and non-core, non-democratic states could have gone on their merry ways. Should a big enough threat emerge (or re-emerge), the threatened states could always form a new alliance. But absent a real threat, a defensive alliance is a contradiction in terms.
Instead of happy dissolution, NATO chose expansion -- right up to the borders of the old USSR. And NATO made promises, and held out the carrot of potential membership, to former Soviet Republics like Ukraine and Georgia. So while it may be true that Vladimir Putin is paranoid, but it's certainly true that NATO has fed his paranoias. Just as bad, or worse if Carpenter has it right, we've invited in, or kept on, states with no democratic traditions, whose democracies are unraveling.
What missed back then -- and yesterday as well -- is that keeping NATO past its Best By date allowed Britain, France, and Germany to live with the illusion that they could go on indefinitely with minuscule defense budgets. Our attention drifted elsewhere, with the Soviet Union gone and al Qaeda all-too-present. Plus China's rise demands more of our attention each year.
But so long as the North Atlantic Treaty's Article 5 was in effect ("an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all") then Europe could (and did) slash defense spending, comfortable in the illusion that America would always be there.
While cutting those budgets, NATO increased its area of responsibility to include the non-Soviet members of the defunct Warsaw Pact and even the once-Soviet Baltic States.
NATO, in short, bit off more than it could chew while letting its teeth rot.
#2
George W. Bush should have dropped out of NATO after (a) The Turks refused to help in the are on Saddam (b) the French (and I think Germans) were found knee deep in working around the oil-for-foods program.
A serious threat of disbanding NATO (or the US walking away which is the same thing) might cause a few allies to start reconsidering anti-American foreign policies.
[WSJ] We're in the midst of a rebellion. The bottom and middle are pushing against the top. It's a throwing off of old claims and it's been going on for a while, but we're seeing it more sharply after New Hampshire. This is not politics as usual, which by its nature is full of surprise. There's something deep, suggestive, even epochal about what's happening now.
I have thought for some time that there's a kind of soft French Revolution going on in America, with the angry and blocked beginning to push hard against an oblivious elite. It is not only political. Yes, it is about the Democratic National Committee, that house of hacks, and about a Republican establishment owned by the donor class. But establishment journalism, which for eight months has been simultaneously at Donald Trump's feet ("Of course you can call us on your cell from the bathtub for your Sunday show interview!") and at his throat ("Trump supporters, many of whom are nativists and nationalists . . .") is being rebelled against too. Their old standing as guides and gatekeepers? Gone, and not only because of multiplying platforms. Gloria Steinem thought she owned feminism, thought she was feminism. She doesn't and isn't. The Clintons thought they owned the party--they don't. Hedge-funders thought they owned the GOP. Too bad they forgot to buy the base!
All this goes hand in hand with the general decline of America's faith in its institutions. We feel less respect for almost all of them--the church, the professions, the presidency, the Supreme Court. The only formal national institution that continues to score high in terms of public respect (72% in the most recent Gallup poll) is the military.
#2
Heh. As one of the Establishment "wannabes" (which is why she endorsed Obama), she hasn't even a clue that we lump her in with that group, and thus despise her.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[USATODAY] Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the U.S. Attorney was using "prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion protected Lerner from the grand jury.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
I missed an important point in yesterday's column about Russia, Turkey, and the risks of a broader war over Turkey -- but it's something I did cover over a year ago.
