That's by Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post.
August 3, 2023
One way to ensure that rights are not violated is to interpret them as very small.
Get ready for lots of pieces like "The Trump indictment tramples no one’s First Amendment rights."
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27 comments:
"The Trump indictment tramples no one’s First Amendment rights."
Well, it tramples Trump's rights, sure, but that's a feature, not a bug.
One way to ensure rights are not violated is to take them away entirely.
Accused of conspiring to subvert the Constitution, Donald Trump now wants to wrap himself in it.
Because the protections of the constitution don’t extend to those accused of undermining it. That’s quite a loophole Marcus has dreamed up. The comments over there are exactly what one would expect from a WaPi reader.
The 'tolerant left' lost its vision circa 1990 with the rise of political correctness as a concept and the implementation of oxymoronic hate speech laws. At that point the left became more-conservative-than-liberal, and then 'progressively' more dogmatic and conservative for 30 years. Today's Democrats are as zealous and closed-minded as the evangelical Christians of the 1980s. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority...welcome your new brown-shirted lefty allies.
"Kill them all, God will know his own."
Self-aware? Not so much. Selfish and primal? Very much.
Well the title is correct. If you pretend people hardly have rights at all, then you don't need to worry about trampling what to you doesn't exist. I don't worry about smashing ants either yet don't they have a right to live?
Interesting headline. Perhaps the indictment doesn’t take away rights, but a conviction… Well, that’s a different story.
Playbook is so old and increasingly overused - don't want acknowledge a problem or even reality, much less deal with it? Just redefine a few words, and the problem magically disappears, reality is recast. If Daniel Patrick Moynihan hadn't shuffled off this mortal coil, he would be ruefully shaking his head at the attempt to now also define rights downward. But it's been working with deviancy for decades (see 'Minor-Attracted Person') so using it here is hardly surprising and should be expected.
"Perhaps the indictment doesn’t take away rights..."
A good faith prosecution is not a violation of rights, but a bad faith prosecution violates due process.
But you make a good point about the headline.
I see some these days asking how the Left suddenly became the party of censorship, anti-free speech, anti-individual Statists.
The Left has always been this way. These are the characteristics of the Left, as they constantly tell others to beware of the extreme right wing fascist authoritarians. The Left in America is just evolving to what the Left throughout world history always grows into.
A lot of people missed the 20th century. Unfortunately, Ruth Marcus was around for it and should know better.
I’m Clintonparsing ‘no one’. Not ‘no’ one…every one…
“That's by Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post.”
And that’s all I need to know.
I read this blog post with its headline as effortless pandering to the Althouse Trumpian base, without having to take on any specific thing that Ruth Marcus wrote, and without Althouse having to stake out a hard position on a Trump First Amendment/civil rights defense to the latest felony charges.
Just 24 hours ago, Althouse wrote in self-defense of another related blog post, "I didn’t say anything that wasn’t precisely true..."
What did Ruth Marcus write that wasn't precisely true? What did Ruth Marcus write that wasn't substantively and incontrovertibly true?
Jersey Fled said...
“That's by Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post.”
And that’s all I need to know.
+ 1
Yah, it’s all fun and games until you’re the target, Ruth…
“ A good faith prosecution is not a violation of rights, but a bad faith prosecution violates due process.”
Thanks, Ann. I appreciate the clarification. It also sends a chilling message to the broader community.
Miss Marcus persists in demonstrating why she didn’t practice law for very long.
"One way to ensure that rights are not violated is to interpret them as very small."
Even better is to interpret them as privileges temporarily granted by the state, if you're nice. Which is the essence of the prog project, and has been for over a century.
Once again, the wisdom of the WaPoo. It all depends on what the narrative is.
The chickens don't get to decide what "cage-free" means. Industry lawyers and government regulators do that. The plain meaning of common words is irrelevant except as a marketing tool.
Progs take the same approach to constitutional rights.
Whew! For a minute there, I was worried that Hillary Clinton's repeated statements in 2016 that Trump's election was fraudulent, due to Russian interference, might get her indicted under Smith's interpretation. Good to know her First Amendment rights to say that are not endangered.
robother said...
Whew! For a minute there, I was worried that Hillary Clinton's repeated statements in 2016 that Trump's election was fraudulent, due to Russian interference, might get her indicted under Smith's interpretation. Good to know her First Amendment rights to say that are not endangered.
Trump isn't being indicted for simply saying anything. Trump isn't being indicted for inciting a riot on January 6. Even though he was the direct proximate cause of that riot.
Trump is being indicted for doing things that no Democrat, and certainly no Democratic president, ever did.
Hillary conceded her loss to Trump within hours of the polls closing in 2016. Hillary pursued no crazy lawsuits, and no recounts. Hillary did not threaten or cajole or even speak to any election officials, or try to get them to change results. Hillary attended the Trump inauguration.
So yeah; her free speech about the election was unimpaired. Trump's free speech -- even now -- is unimpaired. He can say that journalists should be "prison brides." He can claim that Biden is senile. He can say that Jack Smith is a drug-addicted pervert. (Although that one is not going to do Trump much good.) Trump can do all of those things. He won't be indicted for any of those things. He is not being indicted for saying that the 2020 election was stolen. He is being indicted for taking steps to try to stop the 2020 electoral process, and for trying to steal that election for himself.
See you in court.
Will "Chuck" ever leave us alone? He infests this comments section with half assed theories of his own. I now doubt that he is the lawyer he claims to be since his nonsense does not sound like valid law.
See you in court.
Bend over, big boy.
If you want to improve election transparency and security, that's criticism of the government and a criminal insinuation that our elections are not perfect, thus undermining faith in them, which is treason, plainly.
This means that one's right to vote for cleaner elections has been taken away, since any politician who suggests any change must be clapped in chains and put on bread and water for life for insurrection, simply for lack of politicians willing to risk prison by criticizing election security. So yeah, my rights are taken away.
"He is being indicted for taking steps to try to stop the 2020 electoral process, and for trying to steal that election for himself."
All of those steps were perfectly legal and within the rules laid out by the Constitution.
Why don't you tell me which step that he took was illegal. It is perfectly legal, or was at the time, for state legislatures to send their own slates of electors, and the remedy for a bolixed up election, which this plainly was, is to throw it to the House, not to take it to local courts.
"See you in court."
We know the courts are corrupt, so you are likely to win on that one. He has already been acquitted on these charges by a jury of his peers, the US Senate, and trying him again in a jurisdiction where the jury pool is 90% partisan Democrats and the judges are reliably in the tank is just the kind of bullshit twisting of the law on its head that Ben Franklin warned us about.
Uh oh.
Someone criticized a far left partisan democratical!
Time for LLR-democratical and Violent Homosexual Rage Rape Fantasist Chuck to go Full Protector Of Dems Mode!
LOL
"All of those steps were perfectly legal and within the rules laid out by the Constitution."
For progressives, the only time what's in the Constitution is considered relevant is when it allows them to do what they've already decided to do or have already done.
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