Daily Archives: July 21, 2020

Roger Stone is an infamously execrable force in American politics. Perhaps his only saving grace is that he's not a hypocrite about it.

Stone is a proud "dirty trickster." The GOP kept him on a leash lest his amorality be too closely associated with the Republican brand. Part of his code is that the best defense against legitimate criticism is to shoot the messenger: "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."

As a proud cynic, if not an outright sybaritic nihilist, Stone would probably find the very notion of legitimate criticism foolish. "Nothing is on the level," he says. What's right is whatever you can get away with. "It's better to be infamous than never famous at all." (These bits of wisdom are laid out in "Stone's Rules," which reads like Mao's Little Red Book of Trumpism.)

I suspect that one reason Stone has a cult following on the right and among many in the media a fan club that long predates his status as a Trump loyalist is his willingness to own his political amorality in unapologetic sound bite form, thus immunizing himself from conventional charges of hypocrisy. When you turn deceit and dishonor into guiding principles, the only way you can be a hypocrite is if you fail to go low enough.

But Stone's hypocrisy exemption isn't transferable. His defenders, and defenders of President Trump's Friday-night commutation of Stone's prison sentence for seven felony counts of perjury, obstruction of Congress and witness tampering, won't escape judgment for their two-faced behavior.

The three main commutation defenses, all offered with Stonian shamelessness, are: (1) The president has the power to do it; (2) it was warranted because Stone's conviction was part of the "Russia hoax"; and (3) other presidents used their pardon and commutation power corruptly, too.

The first defense is true as far as it goes, though its a straw man given that few dispute it.

Second, whatever you think of the Russia investigation, Stone is guilty of the crimes he was tried for. Indeed, if Stone believed Trump to be wholly innocent and that the Russia collusion claim was a hoax, why not fully cooperate with investigators to clear the air?

The third and most popular defense is the one that reeks of hypocrisy.

A common talking point is that Bill Clinton abused his pardon power, too. Clinton pardoned his own brother! He pardoned billionaire fugitive and Clinton fundraiser Marc Rich!

Roger Clinton's pardon was indeed unseemly. And liberals denounced it. Jimmy Carter was outraged by the Rich pardon. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer couldn't "think of a single justification for [it]." Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank called it a "real betrayal" of Clinton's supporters. "It was contemptuous."

Liberals called the inexcusable inexcusable. Now, the majority of GOP senators seem not just willing but thrilled to excuse the inexcusable admitting nothing, denying everything and launching counterattacks. Indeed, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said he wants to grill special counsel Robert Mueller because Mueller penned an op-ed defending the Stone prosecution.

Congratulations, Roger Stone: You won. It's your party now.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.

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Jonah Goldberg: The Republican Party now belongs to Roger Stone - The Ledger

If only mobs were allowed to destroy federal property without consequence. Then there wouldnt have to be any dispute over federal agents defending a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore.; it could simply be overrun and burned to the ground with no unwelcome resistance from the government.

As it is, Portlands mayor, Ted Wheeler, who presides over a city that has become a watchword over the years for left-wing thuggery unchecked by municipal authorities, has roused himself to a state of high dudgeon over federal officers trying to counter ongoing assaults on a federal building.

He calls the feds a direct threat to our democracy and argues that they are engaging in unconstitutional arrests and inflaming protests that he had hoped would end within a matter of days.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden had this cool-headed take on the president and his acting secretary of Homeland Security: Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown, because they think it plays well with right-wing media.

If Portland was on the verge of calm prior to the arrival of the feds in force, it would have been the first time since the killing of George Floyd.

Protests have taken place every day since May 28. A few headlines form a timeline, from the local TV station Koin.com: For May 29: Massive Vigil in North Portland Leads to Declared Riot Downtown. For May 30: Curfew Imposed and Ignored. For June 30: Police Building Protest: Another Riot Was Declared by Police.

Although the federal courthouse has done nothing to provoke protesters and has been standing at the same spot since 1997, it has been a constant target. Protesters have smashed its glass doors, covered its exterior with graffiti and repeatedly attempted to light it on fire. This has been happening since at least early July.

True to form, protesters over the weekend took down fencing and lit a fire at the buildings entryway. As a statement by the Portland police put it, dozens of people with shields, helmets, gas masks, umbrellas, bats and hockey sticks approached the doors of the courthouse but surely it was just a misunderstanding that led the federal officers to believe they had to repulse them with tear gas.

This isnt hard: It is the people attacking federal property who bear moral responsibility for whats happening in Portland. In all the cities around the country where nihilistic mobs arent trying to burn down symbols of our justice system, theres no enhanced presence of federal officers.

The feds havent been wearing badges with their names and have been using unmarked cars for fear of retaliation against the officers involved and mob actions against vehicles.

Both are unquestionably legal tactics. According to DHS, the officers are wearing the insignia of their agencies and unique identifiers; they are arresting only people suspected of involvement of attacks against federal property; and they are identifying themselves to arrestees, although not to crowds.

Perhaps these officers should be more clearly identified, but there is no case whatsoever for calling them, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has, stormtroopers who are kidnapping protesters.

The arrest of a man named Mark Pettibone has gotten a lot of press attention. He says he did nothing wrong and was arrested by federal agents, who took him to the federal courthouse and read him his Miranda rights, before releasing him.

He wasnt detained indefinitely, or disappeared, or harmed in any way, but apparently arrested in error and then allowed to go on his way.

It would be one thing if municipal authorities in Portland could legitimately claim that they have things under control. They dont. The mobs have been clashing with the local cops for months.

This longstanding riot is a stark commentary on the misgovernance of Wheeler, who is far better at insulting federal law enforcement than he is at doing at his job.

Rich Lowry is author of The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United and Free. Twitter: @RichLowry

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Nancy Pelosi and Democrats have it exactly wrong on feds vs. protesters in Portland - New York Post

WASHINGTON, July 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Family Research Council's Cathy Ruse received the Ruth Institute's "Activist of the Year" awardfor exposing radical, anti-science sex ed and transgender mandates in public school systems, especially in Fairfax County, Virginia. The Ruth Institute seeks to inspire survivors of the sexual revolution. Cathy Ruse continues to trailblaze on this topic; she most recently authored FRC's publication, "Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination."

Cathy Ruse, FRC's Senior Fellow and Director of Human Dignity released the following statement:

"Wealthy international pressure groups are using sex ed in public schools to manipulate children. And leftist school boards like Fairfax County are willing accomplices. By their own admission, these groups view public schools in Northern Virginia as 'laboratories' for their experimental policies, like teaching children they can be born in the wrong body. Public schools should never experiment on children. Children are not lab rats. This scenario is playing out all across the country.

"Yes, we must protect our own children. But opting out is not enough. Because right down the street, at your local public school, there is a spiritual battle raging over the next generation and so often our side isn't even on the battlefield. It's time to get into the arena! Justice demands it, but wisdom too. Because the vast majority of our governors, teachers, sheriffs, doctors, and lawyers will come from our nation's public schools. We cannot let the sexual nihilists shape them in their own image," concluded Ruse.

To download a copy of Cathy Ruse's publication, "Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination," visit: https://www.frc.org/sexeducation.

To request an interview with Cathy Ruse, contact [emailprotected].

SOURCE Family Research Council

https://www.frc.org

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FRC's Cathy Ruse Receives 'Activist of the Year' Award - PRNewswire

Call it a dagger of the mind or the stuff of wicked dreams, but as the COVID-19 death toll climbs and election day nears in my homeland, Ive begun to think of the Donald of Manhattan as the Thane of Cawdor, otherwise known as Macbeth.

It all started back in January. During his failed defence of democratic norms, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff made reference on the Senate floor to a CBS News report in which a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike. His remark drew gasps of not true from Republican senators whove heard far worse on a nearly daily basis from the Twitter account of their partys standard bearer.

The phrase head on a pike brought me back to the final scene of Roman Polanskis 1971 film Macbeth. After the hero, Macduff, unceremoniously hacks off the usurpers cursed head and proclaims the time is free, those whove been freed shove a pike into Macbeths noggin. For a few fleeting moments, we see the gruesome scene from the perspective of the fallen kings dying eyes: looking up, instead of down, at his subjects and witnessing their elation at his demise. In my thought experiment, Macbeth is not the senators but Trump. And Macduff is neither Schiff nor any other member of the House or Senate. He is Joe Biden, the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator whose only living son the US president has done his best to destroy.

Former Vice President Joe Biden. Photo: Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File

The analogy is not perfect. Trump has little of the courage, eloquence or self-knowledge of the mighty Macbeth. And its unlikely that Melania has anything like the malign influence Lady Macbeth had over her husband. Nevertheless, by targeting Bidens only surviving son, Hunter, with accusations of corruption for his former seat on the board of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma Holdings, and tying nearly$400 million in military assistance to Ukraine to a desired investigation into Burisma and the Bidens, Trump, like Macbeth, may have set in motion his own political demise, not by a cowering Senate but a disillusioned electorate.

Like Trump, Macbeth, decides to target his rivals families. Hes won the crown by murdering the king not uncommon in Shakespeare. But later, in one of the most heartless decisions in all of Shakespeares tragedies, he sends his henchmen to murder Macduffs entire family, Wife, children, servants, all. This, you may recall, is in addition to the murder of Macbeths friend and comrade in arms, Banquo (and attempted murder of his son), among whose descendants a king is prophesied.

Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Witches for the first time. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Thodore Chassriau, Muse dOrsay, Public Domain

One tends to think that Shakespeare hoists too much tragedy on the shoulders of his heroes. But real life is often far more tragic. In 1972, after being elected senator of his home state of Delaware for the first time, Biden lost his wife and daughter, Naomi Christina, in a car accident. Neilia was 30 years old, and Naomi, lovingly called Amy, had just turned one. Bidens two sons, Hunter and Beau, 2 and 3 at the time, were critically injured in the accident. Biden wouldnt leave their bedside and was sworn in as senator from their Wilmington hospital room.

The boys recovered and eventually went home with their father, who took the train home each night from Washington to Wilmington to be with them, and continued doing so for decades. Biden remarried in 1977, and his wife Jill and he welcomed their daughter, Ashley, into the world in 1981. As he explained in a 2015 commencement speech at Yale, it was in part the tragedies he overcame but more importantly the enduring bond with his family that allowed him to maintain a healthy perspective on what it means to serve the American people.

Also Read: Hollow Man in the Confederacy of Dunces: The Phenomenon of Donald J. Trump

Ambition is really important, he said. You need it. And I certainly have never lacked in having ambition. But ambition without perspective can be a killer. I know a lot of you already understand this. Some of you really had to struggle to get here. And some of you have had to struggle to stay here. And some of your families made enormous sacrifices for this great privilege. And many of you faced your own crises, some unimaginable. But the truth is all of you will go through something like this. Youll wrestle with these kinds of choices every day. But Im here to tell you, you can find the balance between ambition and happiness, what will make you really feel fulfilled. And along the way, it helps a great deal if you can resist the temptation to rationalize.

The speech was given while his son Beau, a former attorney general of Delaware and recipient of the Bronze Star for his service in Iraq, battled brain cancer at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. At the age of three, Beau survived the car accident that claimed the lives of his mother and sister and fractured his brother Hunters skull. Two weeks after his father delivered this speech, Beau succumbed to brain cancer on May 30, 2015. He was 46 years old.

Our common pain is now the coronavirus pandemic, not unlike the plague in Shakespeares time, having claimed more than 140,000 lives in the US alone (on July 20) and threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions more.

It is again Macbeth that most fully captures the anxiety and misery our nation is currently experiencing, where political tribalism and social insecurity seem to deepen with each passing day; with each new protest and each new death by a disease that has itself become grotesquely politicised. The carnage wrought by Macbeth and Lady Macbeths unmoored ambition takes place in an atmosphere of plague and paranoia, where physical ailments are amplified by psychological and emotional distress. As Ross says to Macduff when the latter returns to Scotland after Macbeths ruthless ascent to power:

Alas, poor country,Almost afraid to know itself. It cannotBe called our mother, but our grave, where nothing,But who knows nothing is once seen to smile;Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the airAre made, not marked; where violent sorrow seemsA modern ecstasy.

The bard would never be so prosaic, but its no surprise that the remedy for controlling a deadly pandemic and restoring faith in government is one and the same: Trust. Laurie Garrett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Coming Plague told us as much at the onset of the now global pandemic in a February 15 column for Foreign Policy: An epidemic cannot be fought and won unless the bonds of trust between governments and people can survive the grief, confusions, emotions and medical challenges of the battle.

US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts/File

Clearly, that trust has broken down between much of the US and Donald Trump, who much like Macbeth, imprisoned yet empowered by his all too human vanity, ambition and moral nihilismmay not fully believe but behaves as if:

Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

Literary historian Stephen Greenblatt, in his 2018 book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, never mentions Trump by name, but his passages on Macbethinfer parallels. The internal and external censors that keep most ordinary mortals, let alone rulers of nations, from sending irrational messages in the middle of the night or acting on every crazed impulse are absent, he writes. All tyrants are enemies of the future, he continues, not only in the figurative sense, by undermining the rule of law and the ties that bind; but in Macbeths case, in the literal sense, by destroying the offspring of those who might bring stability and prosperity to the kingdom.

The truest line of that Yale commencement speech Biden gave five years ago about why he commuted from Washington back to Wilmington every night to see his young boys was this: [T]he real reason I went home every night was that I needed my children more than they needed me. Its hard to imagine a better reason for Macduff to return to his plague-ridden Scotland and challenge Macbeth, or to avenge the tyrants assault upon his pretty ones.

Michael Judge, a former deputy features editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a US-based poet and freelance journalist.

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Sound and Fury: Seeing the Trump-Biden Contest Through the Eyes of Macbeth - The Wire