AG Barr

Barr orders legal action against governors whose COVID-19 actions infringe on civil rights

Attorney General William P. Barr Monday ordered U.S. attorneys to consider legal action against governors whose efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infringe upon Americans’ civil rights. In a two-page memo to all U. S. Attorneys, Mr. Barr directed federal prosecutors to “be on the lookout” for local and state directives that could infringe upon religious, free speech or economic rights under the Constitution. “If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court,” Mr. Barr wrote in a memo to all 93 U.S. attorneys. Mr. Barr also directed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Eric Dreiband and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan Matthew Schneider to oversee the department’s efforts to monitor state and local policies. The two officials will work with state and local governments as well as other federal agencies, according to the memo. “Many policies that would be unthinkable in regular times have become commonplace in recent weeks, and we do not want to unduly interfere with the important efforts of state and local officials to protect the public. But the Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis,” Mr. Barr wrote. “We must therefore be vigilant to ensure its protections are preserved, at the same time that the public is protected,” he said. Mr. Barr’s directive comes as governors begin the process to reopen after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered their economies. The path has been slow with some governors proposing reopening in stages, frustrating President Trump. The president is anxious for the nation to get back to work as unemployment claims reach record levels and businesses struggle to stay afloat with Americans stuck inside under stay-at-home orders. Mr. Trump said earlier this month that some governors have “gone too far” in their efforts to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. And his conservative supporters have protested in a number of states demanding their governors loosen restrictions. Mr. Barr last week said the Justice Department would support legal action against states that continue to impose strict social distancing rules, calling the orders “burdens on civil liberties.” “The idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest,” he said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I’m not saying it wasn’t justified. I’m not saying in some places it might [not] still be justified. But it’s very onerous, as is shutting down your livelihood.”

Agreed!!  MAJOR kudos to AG William Barr and his great team at DOJ for this initiative.  It’s time to reassess some of these restrictions and get this country back up and running.  Ask yourself..  When was the last time an Attorney General cared about your freedoms and civil rights?  This is definitely a first in my lifetime.  Excellent!!      🙂

Charles Hurt: Present Shutdowns Come Close to ‘House Arrest,’ Says A.G. Barr

For all you hopeless haters out there, this one’s for you. One minute, you hate President Trump because he is an unbridled dictator trampling the rights of innocent American citizens, especially illegal aliens who are citizens of other countries. He is using the current Wuhan crisis to finally make good on all his secret promises to hand the United States over to Vladimir Putin. Whatever. The next minute, you hate President Trump because he is asleep at the switch, having completely failed to take the deadly virus seriously until it became a full-blown pandemic, particularly threatening to America’s prison population. In other words, you are political Goldilockses who hate President Trump no matter what he does. To be fair, Mr. Trump offers plenty of ammunition in his own words to arm your arguments whichever fever has presently seized you. “I’m going to put it very simply,” Mr. Trump mansplained to reporters last week. “The president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots. When somebody’s the president of the U.S., the authority is total and that’s the way it’s gotta be,” the president of the United States said. Cue the freak-out. Even though Article II, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that the president “shall hath all vested powers to call the shots, which is very powerful.” Section 6 of Article II goes even further to explain that this executive authority is “total,” “shall be bigly,” and — simply — “the way it’s gotta be,” according to the Founding Fathers. But just last month, Mr. Trump was busy feeding different fevers. He sent the press beagles into flea-scratching yowling and hysterics when he suggested that it was actually the governors out there who have the best authority for dealing with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus now that it had arrived in their own states (from China). “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump reportedly told governors during a conference call. Oh, if only the Founders had envisioned the modern conference call when they devised federalism! These remarks, of course, were immediately translated by rabid, quarantined political reporters to mean that Mr. Trump was telling governors and their disgusting citizens to drop dead. After all, he basically was telling them to go home and use their automobile tailpipes as ventilators. Or respirators. You won’t feel a thing, he pretty much told them. Except, of course, he didn’t use those exact words. Or, any of them, actually. Or anything remotely related to any of them. In fact, the next words out of Mr. Trump’s mouth were pretty much ignored in all the stories of how he had told America to please go die. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves,” he said of the respirators and ventilators. “Point of sales — much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.” In other words, Mr. Trump encouraged governors that they and their powers are best suited to be on the front lines battling a public health crisis such as this. Precisely as the Founders envisioned. All of which brings us to this week’s “Moment of Gratitude.” Nothing is more vital during endless quarantine than taking a moment every day to add up all the blessings around us that offset the considerable misery and hardship. This little exercise does not make the hardships go away nor does it erase the misery, but it puts everything into perspective. One of those blessings these days is happening over at the Department of Justice. Every day, it seems, we learn more and more how constitutionally unhinged the previous administration’s Department of Justice had become. At the highest levels of the most powerful domestic agency in the country, government operatives were falsifying evidence, lying under oath to judges, and using secret powers to investigate, torment, and destroy political enemies. This is all totally astonishing, and the only people who are not shocked by it are the boiling frogs. Today, however, that very same department is helmed by Attorney General William Barr, the greatest attorney general since Edmund Jennings Randolph, with the possible exception of William Wirt. While Mr. Trump gives political answers to political questions, Mr. Barr never strays from his lane of strict legal constitutionality. In a wide-ranging interview this week with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mr. Barr defended the actions of governors and the president in responding to the initial CCP virus with executive alacrity. But he also warned that as an ongoing matter — as the immediacy of the crisis fades — the clear constitutional rights of individual citizens return to urgent supremacy. Present shut-downs, he warned, come perilously close to “house arrest.” This, of course, caused the flea-bitten press beagles back to their hide-scratching, eye-rolling madness. And at the notion the federal government’s attorney general would dare challenge governors’ authority to arrest innocent citizens in their own homes, Democrats mounted the barricades of “states’ rights!” I am not kidding. Turn on the TV. They are actually talking about it on air. Publicly. They are not even wearing hoods. (Not even the governor of Virginia.) Which is pretty comical, considering how much Democrats today claim to be sensitive to the ways in which “states’ rights” arguments have been twisted into ugly weapons throughout American history. But, then again, it was the very same Democrats who were twisting those arguments back then. Just ask Democrat George Wallace. Or Democrat Robert C. Byrd.

Ahh yes..  Remember the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), a former DEMOCRAT Senate Majority Leader who was in the U.S. Senate as recently as 2009; not the 1920s, 30s, or even 1980s?  What many in the Democrat leadership try very hard to bury is the fact that Mr. Byrd was a former recruiter, and “Exalted Cyclops” (very high rank) in the KKK.  Yep!  That’s right!  And MSNBC, CNN, PBS/NPR, and other brazenly hypocritical liberal news outlets NEVER brought that fact up…EVER.  He even got a pass from former President’s Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  Heck, even Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton even looked the other way.  Now…just fathom for a moment if it was discovered that a Republican member of Congress or the Senate had been in the KKK…  That person would be out of D.C. so fast it’d make your head spin.  Just another example of brazen hypocrisy from the left we’re all too happy to point out.  But, we digress…  Thanks to columnist Charles Hurt for that outstanding op-ed.     🙂

William Barr confirms expanded Justice Department probe of Russia-Clinton links

Attorney General William P. Barr revealed Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that Russian operatives fed disinformation to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election season. Mr. Barr told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the expanded scope of a review into “the activities over the summer of 2016,” which included vehemently anti-Trump FBI senior officials making key decisions on the investigations of Mrs. Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump. One key question is how much the FBI relied on the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, using information gleaned from Russian sources, which helped spur the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. The dossier was funded by payments from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee that were hidden in campaign finance reports behind payments to a law firm. Republican senators said it’s possible that Mr. Steele’s Russian sources were intentionally feeding him disinformation, which then made it to the highest levels of the FBI. Indeed, former FBI Director James B. Comey’s first personal interaction with Mr. Trump was to brief him on the Steele dossier shortly before his inauguration in January 2017. “That’s the definition of collusion,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chamber’s senior Republican. Mr. Barr said he doesn’t know the answer — yet. “That is one of the areas that I’m reviewing. I’m concerned about it, and I don’t think it’s entirely speculative,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One word…karma.  What goes around, comes around.  Now the shoe is on the other foot, and AG Barr is rightfully assembling a team to look into how this whole nonsense actually started.  The whole things was based on lies and a brazen abuse of power by the Obama DOJ.  Pop some popcorn and get ready to sit back and watch the fireworks as the heads of Dems explode over this.  They fed America the lie that their duly-elected President was a traitor and a Russian plant.  Now, we know the whole Russian collusion narrative was a hoax; a hoax perpetrated by Dems and their willing accomplices in the dominantly liberal mainstream media.  AG Barr is gonna investigate how it started, and follow the trail wherever it leads.  And corrupt Dems are nervous as heck, which is why they’re disingenuously crying foul.  This is gonna be fun!  For more, click on the text above.   🙂