America’s descent into lawlessness

[Valin]

Washington Times:

Chaos reigns when the law favors protected individuals and groups

Victor Davis Hanson

Sept. 9 2015

 

Do you remember Lewis “Scooter” Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

 

(Snip)

 

Apparently, the very suspicion of improper behavior by high public servants once warranted vigorous legal inquiry — by supposedly independent and autonomous prosecutors. In the eight-plus years since the Libby trial, the Obama administration has blown up the law as we have known it for centuries.

 

Barack Obama once warned Latino activists that he had no legal authority to suspend enforcement of federal immigration law, stop deportations and offer de facto amnesties. But that caution was only a campaigning talking point. After his re-election in 2012 and the midterm elections in 2014, President Obama made a mockery of immigration law. Hundreds of liberal sanctuary cities have announced that federal immigration law does not apply to them. That scary, neo-Confederate idea of legal nullification was sanctioned by the Obama administration — in a way it never would have been if a city had suspended the Endangered Species Act, emissions standards or gun-control legislation.

 

(Snip)

 

Almost everything former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has stated about her improper use of a private email account and server has been proven false. A State Department staffer who worked on Mrs. Clinton’s private server plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before a congressional committee about his role in privatizing her email. But like Ms. Lerner, Mrs. Clinton has escaped an indictment or jailing.

 

Not so Kim Davis. She is a conservative Christian court clerk in Kentucky who apparently thought, given the lawless times, that she could ignore without consequence a Supreme Court decision making gay marriage legal.

Ms. Davis was jailed for not enforcing the law. That is a justifiable punishment — if it were applied equally to the progressive mayors of sanctuary cities and all officials who likewise ignore federal law.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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Yet one more way Obama is fundamentally changing America.

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6)