Great piece by Clarice Feldman. Worth clicking over for the whole thing. Here’s a snippet:
“…Nothing offends people more than unequal justice — disparate treatment of protected persons and classes. This week, the FBI and Department of Justice’s hash of equal justice became even clearer and the media’s fat thumb on the scales as well.
If you read nothing else this week, read this essay by Lord Conrad Black in the New York Sun, who links the Special Counsel fiasco and the Jussie Smollett hoax and concludes that we just avoided the “biggest constitutional crisis since the Civil War”:
The authors, accomplices, and dupes of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because — in fired FBI Director James Comey’s formulation — a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or — in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s words — “the threat” was too great. Never mind that the nature of “the threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Mr. Comey disapproved of as president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.
The extent of the criminal misconduct of the former law enforcement and intelligence chiefs is now notorious, but to make the right point here, it has to be summarized. The fact that the officially preferred candidate lied to federal officials about her emails and acted in outright contempt of Congress and the legal process in the destruction of evidence, was simply ignored by the FBI director, who announced that she would not be prosecuted, though he had no authority to make that determination.
The dossier of salacious gossip and defamatory falsehoods amassed by a retired British spy from the lowest grade of intelligence sources in Russia, commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, was circulated to the media by high public officials and cited in illegal and dishonest applications to authorize surveillance of the campaign of the other presidential candidate. A special counsel was empowered on the false pretext of the necessity to get to the bottom of Trump-Russian collusion in the election…
The special counsel then packed his staff with militant Clinton partisans, and acted very late and only when his hand was forced by the press to remove two officials who referred in texts to each other to the Bureau’s ability to smear and provoke the impeachment of the winning candidate as “an insurance policy” against his filling the office to which he was elected.
He asserts, and I agree, that the defamation campaign against the president continues with the now-debunked tale of racism by the Covington students and the thoroughly debunked tale of assault on Jussie Smollett.
I believe the concept of “hate crimes” is an oxymoron. If you assault or murder someone it’s fair to assume it was out of improper animus. Adding a kicker for “hate” in which attacks on certain classes of people result in enhanced sentences strikes me as an improper “thought crime” punishment, inconsistent with constitutional law.
In any event, the laws on hate crimes seem to be as selectively enforced as the crimes of mishandling and leaking classified material and attempting to overthrow the president. Here too the press plays an important part, demonizing the President’s supporters, and downplaying or not reporting hate crimes against them while regularly magnifying defamatory and false accusations against them…”
Original