Tag: Hunter Biden

About Those Norms…

Players in the Democratic Party have spent the better part of the last 2 years piling on Attorney General William Barr, alleging that he is a political hack who can not be trusted to run the Department of Justice.  While speaking from the Senate floor, Charles Schumer (D-NY), said: “His confirmation occurred only a few months ago and yet in a short time Mr. Barr’s conduct has raised damning questions about his impartiality and about his fitness…”

AG Bill Barr

That’s the same Charles Schumer who directly threatened Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh when he addressed demonstrators on the steps of the Supreme Court:  “…I want to tell you, Gorsuch… I want to tell you, Kavanaugh… you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” 

Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

For this outburst the senior Senator from New York earned a reprimand from Chief Justice Roberts as well as the American Bar Association and others. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, hardly a right wing extremist, agreed with Justice Roberts, characterized Schumer’s remarks as “inexcusable” and called on him to apologize. Schumer, of course, did no such thing. 

There is another apology that Schumer and Company ought to be make, namely to Attorney General Bill Barr. Note that AG Barr recently said that the Justice Department looked at claims of electoral fraud in the November elections and did not find evidence to conclude that fraud changed the outcome, thereby pulling the rug out from under Trump’s claim of victory, not to mention his legal strategy, such as it is. 

And then, just yesterday the story broke that Hunter Biden, son of President-elect Joe “Here’s the Deal” Biden, is under federal criminal investigation both in Delaware and in the Southern District of New York. Moreover the investigation has been going on for some time, at least since the spring of 2020. In keeping with Justice Department guidelines, the investigation was kept under wraps so as not to influence the upcoming election in November. 

Compare that with the behavior of Loretta Lynch in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. Or with the gusher of leaks coming out of the FBI for the purpose of taking down the Trump presidency.  Or with the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS during the Obama years. Or with the grandstanding of Sally Yates. 

There has indeed been plenty of norm busting in the Justice Department in recent years. But it wasn’t the work of Bill Barr. He played it straight, and in so doing he enraged Democratic partisans whose idea of norms is whatever behavior advances progressive goals. 

Democrats owe Attorney General Bill Barr an apology, but it’s an apology that will never be offered. That would require a sense of honor. 

JFB

Biden Inc

We are being treated to a new level of liberal hysteria, and that is truly impressive when you consider it has being boiling hot ever since the darkest day in American history, November 8, 2016. The proximate cause for the wail du jour has been set off by the NY Post, which had the effrontery to report on what it claims are e-mails that show that Biden Inc. used its influence for personal enrichment in the Burisma matter. 

Sure enough Facebook and Twitter went into suppression mode and tried to limit the reach of the story. (Note to Republican Congressman: these companies are private actors and have every right to publish or not publish pretty much whatever they want. So butt out). More to the point, lefty journalists have been very quiet about the subject hoping it will go away. And they have been working overtime trying to silence other journalists who would deign to cover the story. 

The usual routine, which is on full display here, is to refer to an inconvenient story as having been “debunked”. Which in no way means that the story has actually been shown to be false or inaccurate. That would require authentic reporting, as in asking who, what, when, where and why. We get precious little of that these days. 

But the whole business does raise a rather obvious question, namely why the effort to suppress the story? Surely if the story is demonstrably false it would redound to Mr. Biden’s benefit as well as to any reporter who could produce hard evidence showing it to be false.  That has not yet happened, despite the obvious incentives.

Perhaps that is because it is very likely that the story is true. That the Biden family’s financial good fortune is intertwined with Mr. Biden’s political career has been amply documented in the past. It is worth reading, for instance the Atlantic Magazine on the matter. Or this article in Politico. Biden rates an entire chapter in Peter Schweitzer’s “Profiles in Corruption”. 

That Biden has used his political positions to enrich his family is not really seriously in question. What he has done may have been legal, in which case we are just talking about legal corruption. What is instructive is the frantic effort to bury the story. 

Anything or anyone that threatens the power grab underway by the new authoritarians of the left will be met by whatever means necessary. And if that requires running over pesky constitutional rights, corrupting the courts, changing electoral processes on the fly, and using government power to suppress the opposition, so be it.  

There are no enemies to the left, and all that matters is acquiring political power. 

Anyone who doubts the Democrats’ all consuming lust for power had only to watch the performance of the allegedly moderate Senator Amy Klobuchar (D.MN) on the Senate Judiciary panel in the hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Here is what she said responding to Judge Barrett. 

[“ …I appreciate it, judge, that you said that you didn’t want to be a queen. I actually wouldn’t mind being a queen around here, truth be known. I wouldn’t mind doing yet. Kind of a benevolent queen in making decisions so we could get things done…”].  

That says it all. 

JFB