Shame is the Name of the Game

Justice in the Obama Administration has a mother; and she has a name; and her name is Shame.

Caught red-handed at the Phoenix airport by an enterprising local TV reporter meeting for a half hour on her private plane with the notoriously sketchy, but powerful, husband of the women who is the subject of the FBI's most high profile investigation in decades, Attorney General Lynch offered plausible and innocent (if lame) explanations: the conversation was confined to "grand children", "golf" and "family", she calmly explained.

However innocent the meeting was, it now appears that Lynch been shamed into declaring that she will follow the Bureau's recommendation regarding its criminal investigation into then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's irregular use of a private email server, and not override the recommendation for reasons of politics:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/loretta-lynch-hillary-clinton-email-server.html?_r=0

But back to the unseemly encounter, which raises a whole slew of collateral questions: What was Lynch thinking? What was he thinking? [Rarely can it be safely said that an assignation is the furthest thing from Slick Willy's mind whenever he meets in private with a female, but in the case of stubby, chubby Ms. Lynch, that can confidently be said.] Why does the Attorney General need to fly around on a private plane? What was Ms. Lynch doing in Phoenix? Was the no doubt expensive trip really necessary?

Lynch and her husband are apparently old friends of both Bill and Hillary. Before his impeachment, Bill Clinton appointed Lynch to the position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The Lynches and Clintons have apparently remained friends since. This is the innocent reason dogmatic Clinton defenders have advanced for why the extroverted Bill felt at ease walking across the tarmac to meet with the AG, and she with him.  

But the Clintons (and the Lynches, for that matter) cannot have it both ways.  

If the Clintons and Lynches are so chummy, then Justice Department regulations require that she recuse herself from the investigation of Secretary Pantsuyit. Conversely, if they are not, why did Bill initiate the meeting in the first instance, and why on earth did Lynch take it?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/bill-clinton-loretta-lynch-224972

The meeting on the tarmac Monday in Phoenix, Arizona between Citizen Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the woman who will ultimately decide whether Hillary Clinton is indicted, has generated such a malodorous stench that even the Democrats are complaining.   

Here are the known facts: For approximately one half hour, the Attorney General of the United States met with the powerful spouse of a high-profile individual who is under investigation for a variety of crimes and who happens to be the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, in circumstances where: (i) the husband is a potential witness in the case, (ii) he was unrepresented by counsel, (iii) the meeting took place at an irregular, indeed surreptitious, venue, and (iv) both participants did their best to keep it on the down low for as long as they could.

At a minimum, the meeting was improper; the optics alone, much less the nature of what was discussed, do not pass the smell test, as even Democrats have been shamed into admitting.

But why all the fuss? 

For anyone familiar with the long history of Clinton unseemliness, this is standard operating procedure. 

And the quiescence of the dishonest liberal media in Clinton cunning and unseemliness is all part of the piece. (Imagine the howls from the New York Times or The Washington Post, or others, had a Republican-appointed federal prosecutor - much less the Attorney General of the United States - pulled a stunt like this.) 

This is a good reminder of the fact that Bill Clinton, who is angling to become the first ever First Man, is referred to as a "successful sociopath" by my friends in the Bureau who know something of personality profiling.  

In addition, Bill Clinton is a successful con man. And the distinguishing feature of con men is not so much cunning and deception but brazenness. As a former federal prosecutor once observed to me in amazement: "They take their girl friends to the closing!"  

The tactics of tyrannical Team Clinton were captured for the ages by the following epigram of Tacitus: “Criminality, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity".   

Do we really want a Clinton Restoration, where everything is for sale, from nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, to national secrets, to Presidential pardons, and where the Clintons, when caught red handed, have an answer for everything and trot out craven surrogates like Lanny Davis, James Carville, and Paul Begala to spin it all away? 

A Clear Choice

Any attempt to reduce the two candidates, Clinton and Trump, to the same level amounts to an exercise in “false equivalency”, a tiresome phrases frequently deployed by those ill equipped to form even the most rudimentary moral distinctions, but in this case quite apt.

By whatever criterion one choses - from considerations of right-to-life, to the selection of judges, to military preparedness, to reducing the role of government, to protection of religious liberties, to simplification of the tax code, to job creation, to personal temperament, to the candidate’s record of professional accomplishment, and on and on – any sentient being capable of rational thought and untrammeled by a personality disorder (this latter eliminates the hysterical Glenn Beck, the frantic attention-seeker, Bill Kristol, the cowardly and envious Mitt Romney, and, most recently, the prissy, social-climbing, bow-tie Beltway conservative, George Will) ought easily be able to distinguish the arrant criminality of Hillary Clinton from the metaphysical and stylistic inadequacies of Donald Trump.  

As a movement conservative for over half a century who consorts regularly with conservatives and who has followed this campaign closely, if there is a credible argument for a conservative to do anything other than vote for Trump, I have not heard it.  

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/25/hank-paulson-cites-hillarys-globalist-platform-reason-endorsement/

As a Trump supporter, I was thrilled to see Hank Paulson, a man so identified with Goldman Sachs pay-to-play global capitalism and the deeply flawed economics of “too big to fail”, coming out against Trump and, what’s even better, stating that he will vote for Corrupt Hillary.

Of course he will. He heard and believed every word of Hillary’s reassuring secret speeches to Team Goldman, the transcripts of which a craven media wants us to believe are somehow less relevant than Trump’s tax returns.

Had Paulsen done otherwise, I might have had to recheck my ideological coordinates.  After all, is there another American bankster who, right on down to his villainous persona and physiognomy direct from central casting, captures more perfectly everyone’s idea of the greedy one percenter, and in so doing reminds not only Trump but also Bernie supporters what this presidential election is all about?

Were I Trump, I should make the Paulson endorsement of Secretary Pantsuit a centerpiece of a political ad that would run it sans cesse (as the globalists like to say) from now to November.       

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436966/donald-trump-republicans-dump-trump-withholding-donations

Columns like the above confirm three views I have of George Will, as a man, a writer, and as a personality type.

As a man, Will is at heart a prissy social climber from Illinois who came East, discovered the wonderful world of Brooks Brothers, and then set about establishing a career for himself as a bow-tie Beltway conservative pundit. His pedantic, sissified demeanor betrays insufficient time spent in boys locker rooms competing in helmeted sports as a youth.

As a writer, Will's talents are largely derivative and stem from two sources: (i) an ability to assemble (probably from a commonplace book that he keeps) quotations, epigrams, insights, and anecdotes borrowed from others more distinguished, original, and talented than he, and (ii) an ability to cobble these together in such a way that they support, almost entirely, the foundation and superstructure of his columns. To borrow from Greek antiquity, Will writes prettily; but Trump makes us march. (Could this jealousy be the source of Will's evident malice towards Trump?) Which leads us to ....

As personality type, Will is (how to say it kindly?) ... a fetishist! How else to explain his blind obsession with Donald Trump and his absolute die-hard refusal to say or write anything good about the presumptive GOP nominee, despite significant evidence to the contrary?

What is one to do with such a spoiled child?

What is one to do in general with all these ideological vestal virgins on the Right who behave as if they and only they are pure enough to be keepers of the conservative flame? 

Perhaps one could suggest to Will, and to the other ivory tower conservatives condemned to write for failing (and heavily subsidized) echo chambers like NR and the Weekly Standard, that they get out of their comfortable, rarefied worlds and experience what life is like among the real people of America.

Were they to do so, the choice between a pathologically corrupt liar like Hillary Clinton, on the one hand, and a Blue Collar Billionaire and patriot like Donald Trump on the other, would not seem so difficult, even for those of such precious sensibility as George Will.   

Trump was absolutely within his rights as a litigant and as a citizen to question the partiality of Gonzalo Curiel, the presiding judge in the series of class action lawsuits brought against Trump University. 

Further, on the record before me, Trump's criticism appears to have merit, and instead of being vilified Trump, as the real-party-in-interest defendant in a case that has dragged on for over six (6) years (the initial complaint was filed in April, 2010), should be applauded for exposing the dirty little secrets of federal judges and those of the large, politically connected law firms like Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd who practice class action litigation before them (after trolling for plaintiffs on the firm’s website).

This is particularly so in case where, as here, both the presiding judge (in his affiliations, his rulings, and, possibly, in his courtroom demeanor) as well as the law firm representing the class action plaintiffs (nearly $700,000 in speaking fees paid to Clinton, Inc. since 2009 – an unheard of sum for a law firm) reflect an inherent bias towards a litigant who is conspicuously opposed both to illegal Mexican immigration and to the dynastic ambitions of the Democrat presidential candidate who has been the principal recipient of the firm’s largesse.

Ask yourself this question: Do you think knee-jerk progressives - so eager to impugn Trump for alleged racism (and for every other trait offensive to man) as a result of his comments about Judge Curiel - would have the same take were an Afro-American defendant in a civil case to question the impartiality of a presiding white judge who appeared to have ties, say, to a white supremacist organization, or even an all white country club?

Hint: No. Instead, they would be (i) assailing the judge personally, (ii) clamoring for his recusal on grounds that not just the fact but the appearance of partiality must be avoided, or (iii) both.

Neutral principles anyone?

Several additional points need to be made:

First, neither Judge Curiel (an Obama appointee) nor any other judge inoculates himself from a litigant’s First Amendment criticism by joining the federal bench. (Ironically, the same people horrified at Trump’s outspokenness are full-throated in their obloquy for the judge who imposed a “lenient” six (6)-month sentence for Brock Turner, the convicted defendant in the Stanford rape case. 

Second, anyone who has ever tried a case, civil or criminal, knows that the political (and other) biases of judges (all of whom secured their positions either through political appointments or running in elections as political candidates) are frequently insufficiently masked from the litigants and lawyers who appear before them, and can influence the outcome of those cases. Were it otherwise, the remedy of judicial recusal would be unnecessary. It is anything but.

Third, most criticism of Trump entirely overlooks the essential point: Whether the judge has in fact demonstrated judicial bias against Trump in the three civil cases over which he presides. Trump, as the real party in interest, is in a better position than any of his critics to know that, as it is he who, presumably, speaks to his defense counsel and hears their complaints about the rulings or demeanor (or both) of Judge Curiel.

Fourth, there was nothing racial (and certainly nothing racially invidious) in Trump's comments, except in the general sense that any observation about another’s race or national origin can be considered "racist". 

Fifth, given Trump's conspicuous views on illegal Mexican immigration, any judge of Mexican descent involved in an entity entitled "La Raza Lawyers of San Diego Scholarship Fund", whose relationship with the radical National Council of La Raza remains insufficiently unexplored by the MSM, probably ought to recuse himself from the case, if only to avoid the appearance of partiality.

Sixth, in the final analysis, whatever its political fallout (and in my view that fallout will be nugatory), it was a very shrewd trial tactic for Trump, as a litigant, to call out a judge whom he considers biased. After all the sturm und drang, Judge Curiel will now think twice, if he hasn’t already, about putting his thumb on the scale of justice.