San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The vaccine for the madness arrives Nov. 3
There was so much wrong with Attorney General William Barr’s comparison of shelterathome orders to slavery among the great intrusions on civil liberties in America that it’s hard to know where to start. It’s as absurd as it is offensive to speak about human bondage and a lifesaving step against a pandemic in the same breath. It’s ignorant of U.S. history that includes the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forced from their homes and jobs to live in what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “concentration camps” during World War II. It fails to account for the times when Americans were imprisoned for merely speaking out against their government. In fact, Thomas Jefferson ran for president in 1800 on a platform that included repeal of the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it a crime to falsely criticize the government or its officials.
I’ll return to sedition, which is back in a disturbing way, in a moment.
But first, here is what the attorney general said during an appearance in northern Virginia:
“You know, putting a national lockdown, stayathome orders, is like house arrest. It’s — you know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” Barr said.
The attorney general is perhaps the last one with standing to be talking about civil liberties. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that Barr told federal prosecutors in a recent call that they should contemplate sedition charges against those who committed violent acts during protests in recent months. Sedition is one of the gravest crimes on the federal books, designed for those who plot to overthrow the U.S. government. To be clear: Anyone who vandalizes or destroys property, or assaults another person during a demonstration, should be prosecuted for his or her acts. But to characterize this lawlessness as sedition smacks of an authoritarian response to intimidate dissent.
It gets worse.
The New York Times also reported that Barr has asked prosecutors in his Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan — a former U.S. attorney — for allowing demonstrators to establish a policefree zone near the city’s downtown this summer. Democrat Durkan had been a harsh critic of President Trump, tweeting in June that he should “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker” when he threatened federal intervention in response to the protests.
Reasonable people can debate Seattle’s approach to the protests, but there is nothing reasonable about an administration even thinking of prosecuting a duly elected mayor of a major city for acting within her discretion. She rightly called it “an act of tyranny, not of democracy.”
By now there is no longer any question about Barr’s obsequiousness to Trump and willingness to stretch the truth and rule of law in the president’s service. He has thoroughly discarded the notion that an attorney general should uphold the integrity of the office by steering clear of the partisan fray. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Trump were to lose in November.
And, of course, Barr has joined Trump in amping up unsupported fears that voting by mail — greatly expanded during the pandemic — would be rife with fraud. As “evidence,” Barr made a false claim on CNN that “we indicted someone in Texas” who had stolen 1,700 ballots. On an almost daily basis, Trump insists the only way he could lose to Joe Biden would be through widespread fraud.
The paranoia is deepening throughout Trumpworld.
The top communications official for the Department of Health and Human Services accused scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of sedition, “playing politics to undermine president Trump.”
That spokesman, Michael Caputo, predicted that Trump would win the election but Biden would refuse to concede.
“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said on social media. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing. If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”
After those tirades, Caputo announced that he was taking a leave of absence to focus on his health and family.
But it raises the question: How did someone so reckless ever get that highlevel job? And why was he not fired?
There is only one vaccine to this mounting authoritarian threat to the republic. Register. Vote.
“Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”
Attorney General William Barr