Bill Barr's Screed: Blindness about Current Threats
Bill Barr’s Screed: Blindness about Current Threats
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/11/16/bill-barrs-screed-blindness-about-current-threats/
A lot of people are talking about the intemperate speech that Bill Barr gave to the Federalist Society yesterday. I’ll leave the detailed unpacking, about both its legal and historical claims, to others. To me, I find it unsurprising from a guy who used to be a serious authoritarian attorney but who has rotted his brain for the last two decades watching Fox News.
Obviously, Barr makes claims about “progressive” politics while ignoring that some things he celebrates — such SCOTUS letting conservatives gerrymander their fellow citizens out of representation — show that Republicans, not “progressives” are the ones “willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications.” Relatedly, Barr absolutely disappears all trace of conservative opposition to Trump (or, for that matter, any other opposition aside from those who adopt the term “resisistence”), and they’re the people who actually fit the description of “conservative” that he imagines he can still claim.
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Bill Barr complains that Congress is spending too much time conducting oversight and not enough time legislating (though he should take this up with Mitch McConnell, because the House is getting plenty of legislating done). But meanwhile, he has failed to do his duty, as he himself describes it.
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Except Bill Barr appears to have zero clue what the biggest current threats to the country are. There’s no mention of climate change, of course, but President Trump has undercut efforts to respond to that emergency.
Closer to home for Barr, there’s a mention of what he calls “Islamist Fascism,” but no mention of white supremacist terrorism, which the FBI considers an increasingly grave threat. The President Barr enables fuels that terrorism, in large part because no one will rein in his worst behaviors.
Finally, there are the threats to our sovereignty posed by the ability of foreign powers — and Russia is just one — the buy up or compromise our politicians, starting with the President, and set US policy in ways that harm this country. This is the threat that Barr not only denies aggressively, but fosters, by flying around the world to find foreign propaganda to inject into our criminal justice system.
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