Aftet three weeks of dithering, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally sought an indictment of Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress. Even though it is an easy case, Garland, for reasons known only to him, sat on his duff for three weeks and refused to act. It is obvious that Garland would have been good as a Supreme Court justice, with his careful, deliberative approach, but he is out of his element as an Attorney General, which requires a vigorous, energetic presence.
The thing about this case is that Bannon has absoutely no defense. His claim of executive privilege is faulty on many levels. First, he was not a part of the executive, having been fired way back in 2017, over three years prior to the acts in question. Second, the right of executive privilege belongs to the executive, not the executive's minions. Third, the right belongs to the current executive; it is not a personal right belonging to a prior executive. The idea is to protect the institution of the presidency, allowing the president to obtain unfettered advice from his closest advisers. Fourth, the right does not protect criminal activity. Fifth, you cannot just willfully ignore a subpoena; you have to appeaar and invoke the privilege, like with any other privilege.
Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking a judicial opinion backing up his executive privilege claim. On Wednesday, two days before Bannon's indictment, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued an awesome opinion rejecting all of Trump's spurious arguments. Indeed, in her opinion Judge Chutkan wrote a line which I think is destined to live in American legal lore, along with other famous pithy statements ike Brandies's "the right to be let alone", Holmes's "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater", Earl Warren's "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", and Potter Stewart saying he could not define obscenity, but "I know it whan I see it". Judge Chutkan's pricelss phrase is "Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President". No more need be said!
The third "good" thing this past week was a teenage girl who had been abducted by a 61-year-old man was able signal to a passing motorist the universal sign for a victim of domestic violence. A series of fortunate events followed, to arrive at a good outcome. First, the girl had to know the signal; second, she had to give the signal without her abductor realizing it; third, the passing motorist had to know the signal (I certainly would not have recognized it, having never heard of it); fourth, the motorist had to follow up by phoning the police; and fifth, the police had to take the call seriously enough to track down the vehicle, stop it, and arrest the sbductor.
The fourth good development in the leal arena is that Britney Spears was finaly, after thirteen years, freed from the conservatorship which denied her the right to make any decisions about her personal life. Her despicable leech of a father has finally been kicked to the curb. Stay tuned for criminl charges against Jamie Spears.
And now the bad. The Judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial displayed the worst examle of bad judicial temperament I have ever seen, in angrily berating the prosecutor for asking an imporoper question. This judge has been a joke since before the start of the trial, when he ruled that the prosecutor could not refer to the three peole the defendant shot (two of them fatally) as "victims". At the same time, the defense was permitted to refer to these victims as ""rioters" or "looters". Jury deliberatioins began yesterday, and it is doubtful that there wil be a conviction on any of the homicide chsrges. Indeed, when asking for lesser included charges, the prosecution was in effect waving the white flag of surrender, pretty much accepting that the jury would believe the defendant's self-defense claims.
And now the ugly. A defense attorney for one of the three white defendants charged in a Georgia case with killing an unarmed black jogger complained to the judge that "black pastors" sitting in the courtroom with the victim's famiy were prejudcing the jury. His statement to the judge was "We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here ... sitting with the victim’s family, trying to influence the jurors in this case.” This in a case in which the defendants were able to exclude so many black jurors that the jury wound up with eleven whites and only one black, this in a county that is majority black. For shame.
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