I was going to introduce a new culture page and comment on my recent attendance at two opera’s and one play. However, the Dems had a bad week and I couldn’t resist commenting on the rare sight of the Democratic party in complete disarray. It started, of course, with the Presidential debate and the picture, opposite, tells the whole story. What does surprise me is the impact it had on the progressives. Like most sane people I thought that everyone knew that the President was suffering a decline and as a result, a very low bar was set for his performance. Normally, if he managed to stay upright for 90 minutes, the press would laud whatever he managed to remember from his week long training session, declare him victorious and we could all move on. That didn’t happen! I think part of the reason why the resulting implosion was so dramatic was that the legacy press just couldn’t defend or miss or diss inform what was in front of peoples eyes.
I will follow up on the reverberations from this disaster later but a slew of Supreme Court decisions added to the progressives’ misery. Of the nineteen, end of term, decisions published, three stand out as being immediately relevant for the election in November.
- Fischer v. United States – This case revolves around the interpretation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 section 15.12.C2. This act was a response to the destruction of evidence in the Enron case and made it an offense if a person, “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” Scotus 603 US 2024. Jan 6 prosecutors, used this act, in conjunction with others, to charge protesters with obstructing official proceedings but the Supreme Court found that the section under which they were charged was limited by the listed destruction of physical evidence and not prevention of the proceedings. This complicates Jack Smiths case against Donald Trump and as an example of the asymmetric application of the law, it should have have been used against Hillary Clinton, who destroyed evidence that was the subject of an investigation. Not surprisingly, in that case the DOJ declined to press charges.
2. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Relentless Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce.
These were two cases brought by fishermen against a government agency who forced the fishermen to pay for an onboard inspector. The issue before the court was that there was no basis in statute or any other regulation that gave the agency the power to do this. The Court decided to overturn, what was known as the Chevron deference, where there was undue weight given to government agencies when expert opinion was needed to decide on ambiguous law. In the cases before it, SCOTUS ruled that Congress had not given these wide powers to the government and therefore, the actions were ultra virus.
3. Trump v. United States. This is the decision that has created most noise from the Dems. Talk of Trump sending Seal Teams to assassinate some political enemy abound. The editorial from the Financial Times, of all papers, gives us a flavour of the end of democracy mantra so loved by the Dems. The editorial is entitled, The Supreme Court has undermined US democracy, and in its final paragraph grandly talks in terms of the American revolution helping to spur the world away from ‘tyranny and towards democracy and accountability. But look around you! We have truly witnessed a revelation when we saw the debate and the frailty of the President. This had been an open secret to those on the right but to those who depended on the legacy press it was really shocking. At every turn government spokes persons, journalists and celebrities talked about how sharp he was, behind closed doors until the lie was exposed. Also, When you talk of the threat to democracy you surely can’t be talking about the Biden administration attempt to prevent his political opponent from being on the ballot, SCOTUS Donald Trump v. Norma Anderson.
Think about it. Who has weaponised and used state agencies to promote autocratic rule against it’s opponents, from pushing Russiagate to hiding Hunter’s laptop from the electorate. Who commands the sort of power that includes the FBI and intelligence agencies to the so called free press. Do we really believe Donald Trump has that power? The FT regrets that the three remaining cases will probably not be heard before the election. Hardly the fault of SCOTUS or Trump, as they could had been heard any time in the last couple of years. As the FT implies the real planned timing was to land these cases to coincide with the Republican primaries and November elections. Speaking of lawfare, the FT shows no interest in putting the SCOTUS decision in context. It did not happen in a vacuum but in response to the attempt to eliminate a political opponent by very undemocratic means. In an article explaining why this provision was needed now, the Washington Examiner made the following comment.
“The difference now is that the Democratic Party has decided Republicans must be prevented at any cost from winning presidential elections and that abusing the criminal justice system and lying about the current president’s mental health are all justified toward that political end. The Supreme Court put a brake on that slide Tuesday and we applaud it.” Washington Examiner, 02/07/24
The FT only had to do a little research to see that the four main cases against Trump were politically motivated. For example, if we look at the prosecutors, both Bragg and Fani Willis were elected on a ‘Get Trump’ ticket. Nothing partisan about that then. Jack Smiths appointment has been challenged and his claimed independence from the Biden DOJ is looking very suspect. But hasn’t Trump been found guilty in NY? The short answer is that he could only have been found guilty in NY or DC, where Trump derangement syndrome is endemic. Even the Justice Department didn’t take the case, possibly because it had failed in a similar case against the Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards. It just got worse when the only witness that could prove conspiracy was a disbarred lawyer, a felon who had serially lied and contradicted his own evidence, who hated Trump and even admitted stealing from him. Michael Cohen is a real piece of debris. I would challenge the FT to take even a cursory glance at this case and tell me that it wasn’t politically motivated with the objective of taking out the Republicans Presidential candidate.
When Joe Biden first stood for President he gave one of his reasons for standing as his opposition to Trumps support for racism, supposedly expressed in his 2017 Charlottesville speech. Biden has repeated the ‘Very Fine People’ quote on many occasions, the most recent being the Presidential debate. The problem is that Snopes, hardly a conservative organisation , has fact checked it and found that, ‘No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People’. Given the number of times Biden used the quote we can only assume that this was deliberate miss information, However, the interesting thing is that it only appears to have been fact checked very recently. This means that the press had looked the other way, as it did with Bidens decline and so many other things, for around seven years and only now seems to have applied some basic journalism to current events. The challenge for the FT is to prove that it isn’t part of the media who covered up Bidens incapacity. The media who supported the whole Russia gate lie, who hid the Hunter laptop from the electorate, who hasn’t reported on the weaponisation of the Federal agencies. Who looks away when Mayorkus says that the border is secure and says that Trump is the enemy of democracy, whilst supporting efforts to prevent him standing in an election.
It is also evidenced by the FT editorial that ignored the context of the Supreme Court decision and without irony, projects all the undemocratic attempts by the Dems to subvert democracy, on to Trump claiming that he is the threat to democracy.
So, we have seen the chaos caused by one event which showed the extent of the Biden administrations contempt for the truth and the media’s compliance by reporting the party line. The FT has to make a decision as to whether they are part of that group or, whether they will go the extra mile to give a balanced view of the news. The editorial referred to above was not balanced or, well researched but a rather lazy and biased fabrication. However, I will agree with their sub title to the editorial which read:
We have now observed the extent to which an occupant of the Whitehouse can erode democratic norms. FT 03/07/24
When will the FT realise that the above is a perfect description of the present administration and be brave enough to report the truth.
Sources
Editorial, The Financial Times, 03/07/24, The Supreme Court has undermined US democracy
Washington Examiner, 02/07/24, Supreme Court strikes proper balance on presidential immunity, washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3065980/supreme-court-strikes-proper-balance-on-presidential-immunity/
Jonathan Turley, 24/03/24, Why Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is falling apart, New York Post, https://nypost.com/2023/03/23/why-braggs-case-against-trump-is-falling-apart/