Friday, September 15, 2023

Bits: Politicized rule of law; Delusional; Fulminating crackpots; Lying liars

Given the virulent animosity the radical right authoritarians feel toward the entire Biden family, the Department of Justice feels it needs to do something. It looks like Hunter Biden is going to get whacked for breaking a law that is rarely enforced. The Messenger writes:
The charges Hunter Biden faces related to a 2018 firearms purchase are also extraordinary in another respect: They are rarely brought against any Americans at all.

“It doesn't happen,” former U.S. Department of Justice inspector general Michael Bromwich said Thursday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “DOJ will need to produce data in discovery, which will show that this is the most selective of prosecutions.” Bromwich served as the DOJ's top internal watchdog from 1994 to 1999 during the administration of former President Bill Clinton.

Hunter Biden, 53, is charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance and two counts alleging he made false statements in the course of purchasing the gun.

Prosecutors accuse Hunter Biden of knowingly possessing a Colt Cobra revolver for an 11-day period in October 2018 while “knowing he was an unlawful user of and addicted to” controlled substances, and falsely certifying on a federal “Form 4473” document he signed in the course of purchasing the gun that he was not using drugs at the time.  
The Government Accountability Office found in a 2018 report that state and federal law enforcement agencies “collectively investigate and prosecute a small percentage of individuals who falsify information on a firearms form.”

In an analysis of 112,000 cases in which firearm purchases were denied due to failed background checks in 2017, the GAO found only about 13,000 of those denials were referred to field divisions for investigations. Those referrals only resulted in 12 criminal cases brought by federal prosecutors by mid-2018.

“It is very unlikely that Hunter Biden would be charged with any of these crimes if his last name wasn’t Biden,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote in a post on X. “Charges for possessing a firearm while under the influence of narcotics are rarely brought. False statement charges in this context are also rare.”  
Lying on the firearms purchase forms is so ubiquitous that the strategy even has a name: “lie and try.”
Twelve prosecutions out of 13,000 (or 112,000?) instances per year where the law was broken. Why the law isn't enforced is an open question. If Hunter gets whacked, so should everyone else who does the same. So why aren't there prosecutions of others for breaking the same law? Politics, or as Mariotti put it, “it is very unlikely that Hunter Biden would be charged with any of these crimes if his last name wasn’t Biden.” 
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The 1/6 traitors are still delusional, but at least some of 'em know it: The WaPo writes:
When Yvonne St Cyr was one of the first people to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Idaho woman said she thought it was her right to crawl through a broken Senate office window to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.

But as she was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in federal prison for her role in the riot, St Cyr said she understood what Jesus felt like when he accepted his fate before he was crucified. And she told the judge that she didn’t feel remorse for her actions.

“I did the right thing,” St Cyr said, according to NBC News. “I know it sounds delusional.”

“I understood what Jesus felt like when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying and felt so alone,” St Cyr said.
The arrogance of some of these people is staggering. They think they know Jesus felt like. That is the essence of delusional.
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Radical right authoritarian Republicans in control of the House of Representatives are in full-blown grade school stupid, rage & hate mode. A WaPo opinion describes it like this:

The House is currently being run not by Speaker Kevin McCarthy but by backbenchers Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

McCarthy, whose main strength as a leader has always been his steadfast devotion to self-preservation, recognized that he was about to get trampled by the impeachment parade. So he stepped out in front of it and pretended to be the drum major. “Today, I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” he announced in a hastily arranged statement outside his Capitol office on Tuesday morning — an hour before Gaetz was scheduled to deliver his speech on the floor denouncing McCarthy.

This set off a perverse competition to claim the credit for forcing McCarthy to bow and scrape: Was it Greene, who as a QAnon devotee and new congresswoman in January 2021 filed impeachment articles against Biden on the first full day of his presidency? Or was it Gaetz, subject of a newly revived House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and corruption?

“When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that … I pushed him for weeks,” Gaetz posted on social media.

“Correction my friend,” retorted MTG in her own post. “I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden … on his very first day in office. You wouldn’t cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming …”

Gaetz, in a conference call with reporters, raised the ante, demanding the immediate impeachment of Biden — without a pesky inquiry. “I’m for it today. I’m for it tomorrow. I’m for it the next day,” Gaetz said. “Is Kevin McCarthy? And if he isn’t, perhaps my dear friend Ms. Greene could be more persuasive with him.”

McCarthy’s very public surrender was his most pathetic moment to date in a short tenure that has had many. In a flailing attempt to preserve his job as speaker, he set the House on an ineluctable course toward deploying the gravest punishment contemplated under the Constitution against the president. He did so even though, after months of lurid probing of the financial (and sexual) dealings of Biden’s drug-addicted son, House Republicans have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by the president — only wild, unsubstantiated allegations of bribery. And McCarthy did so by unilaterally authorizing the impeachment inquiry even though he has said for years, and as recently as two weeks ago, that such a momentous act could be taken only by a vote of the whole House.




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The Hill reports a whopper lie the ex-president is spewing on people: 
Former President Trump says it is not likely he will pardon himself if he is convicted of a crime and elected president again. “I could have pardoned myself. Do you know what? I was given an option to pardon myself. I could have pardoned myself when I left,” .... 
What a lying liar.

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