and in regards to trump vs. state of..... he will no longer have a justice dept that guides evidential investigations and shields such from state prosecutors after he leaves office. those decisions will be made by the incoming attorney general of the united states.
Also true. However, he will want to minimize the damage to him. Think of it, after he gets booted from the White House, he'll have to start paying Barr, that is if he thinks Barr is worth a damn.
i think an ankle bracelet limiting him to a room full of big screen TV's and only MSNBC and CNN on the channel changer would be just.
Obviously, you have centered yourself, with intellectual information. You produced a very well written article.
Thank you. Yes, David French writes very compelling pieces. I will continue to post his Sunday offerings.
highlights from the september 24 piece https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-awful-realities-of-the-breonna The Awful Realities of the Breonna Taylor Case The grand jury’s decision might have been proper, but the laws that led the police to violently enter her home and confront her armed boyfriend are unjust. David French Sep 24 383 Yesterday a grand jury in Kentucky refused to charge the officers who killed Breonna Taylor. This result was both lawful and deeply unjust. 1. The police obtained a no-knock warrant to raid Taylor’s apartment based on allegations thata suspected drug dealer named Jamarcus Glover had received packages at Taylor’s home (Glover and Taylor had a previous relationship). The police sought the no-knock warrant out of a desire to preserve evidence. 2. Before the warrant was served, the police were directed to knock and announce rather than execute the warrant without knocking. At approximately 12:40 a.m. on March 13, the police pounded on Taylor’s door. Taylor was inside with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. He lawfully possessed a handgun. 3. At this point the facts are in dispute. Police claim that they knocked and announced they were police. A witness corroborates this account, but other witnesses dispute it, claiming they never heard the cops identify themselves. Walker claims that he was startled by the pounding, asked who was there, never heard a response, and was worried that it might be Glover. So he grabbed his gun. 4. The police then broke down the door to enter the apartment. Walker and Taylor saw them in the darkness, and Walker fired a single shot, striking one officer in the leg, severing his femoral artery and gravely injuring him. Under the available evidence (Walker hadn’t heard the police identify themselves and unknown individuals were violently entering his home), Walker had a legal right to shoot at the intruders, even if they were police. 5. At the same time, the instant the officers saw that Walker was pointing his gun at them—and certainly when he pulled the trigger—they had their own legal right to shoot back. They were performing their official duties, and an armed man was quite plainly placing them in immediate, mortal danger. 6. They did not, however, have the right to use indiscriminate force. Two officers fired directly at Walker. They hit Taylor, who was standing nearby. But given the proximity of Taylor to Walker, it would be virtually impossible to prove that the officers’ startled response—aimed directly at the perceived threat—was reckless enough to be criminal. 7. There was, however, a third police officer who fired, and he fired his weapon irresponsibly. The grand jury properly indicted former detective Brent Hankison for “wanton endangerment.” I say “former” because the Louisville Metro Police Department had already fired him for showing “extreme indifference to the value of human life.” To be clear, castle doctrine statutes often explicitly state that individuals do not have the right to shoot police officers who attempt to enter a dwelling in the pursuit of their official duties, but there’s a caveat—the person prohibited from “using force” must know or “reasonably should have known” that the person entering was a cop. Do you see how these doctrines create virtually inevitable armed clashes? In the darkness and confusion of a violent entry, a homeowner may not know who is charging straight into his house. If he can’t reasonably and immediately (we’re talking about mere seconds at issue) know that he’s facing police officers executing a warrant, he has a right under the law to open fire. Yesterday, the grand jury correctly applied the law to the facts, and its decision not to charge the officers who fired the fatal shots was almost certainly correct. But Breonna Taylor’s death was still deeply unjust, and the injustices will continue until the law is reformed.
Sounds like a case of manslaughter for someone involved in obtaining the warrant unless it can be proven that the police did not knock or did not identify themselves in which case others might be involved in the whole heinous affair. Perhaps internal affairs or even the FBI should be investigating, although I no longer completely trust the FBI.
Should Americans Worry About Amy Coney Barrett and 'People of Praise'? Let's look at her record. David French Sep 27 Let me begin by laying my cards on the table. I’ve long been an admirer of Amy Coney Barrett, both as a person and a jurist. I believe Donald Trump made a mistake when he nominated Brett Kavanaugh instead of Judge Barrett in 2018, and I believe he made the correct pick yesterday. If he wins re-election in November, she should be promptly and quickly confirmed. I persist, however, in my belief that a rapid vote before the election is imprudent. It’s dangerously hypocritical and inflammatory in an already-volatile and cynical time. Yet those of you following the judicial wars closely know that in some quarters Judge Barrett is especially controversial—beyond the obvious and ongoing judicial differences between progressives and conservatives. There is a persistent religious critique of Judge Barrett that began when Sen. Dianne Feinstein touched off a firestorm by saying to Barrett in her court of appeals confirmation hearing, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” With those words, it appeared that she was imposing an unconstitutional religious test on Barrett’s bid for public office. Why was she singled out? Yes, she’s a faithful Catholic, but she’s hardly the only faithful Catholic in the federal judiciary (much less the Supreme Court). Her jurisprudence will likely be pro-life to some degree, but she’s hardly the only the judge who’s faced confirmation suspicions that she’ll oppose Roe. Instead, the claim appears to be that Barrett is unique. She’s not just religious, she’s super-religious. Or perhaps weirdly religious. And that allegedly weird, extreme religiosity makes her judicial integrity and commitment to the Constitution suspect. The critique centers around her membership in an ecumenical (but predominantly Catholic) charismatic Christian group called “People of Praise.” Back in 2018, prominent law professor and former George W. Bush ethics attorney Richard Painter tweeted a rather blunt, succinct critique: Richard W. Painter @RWPUSA A religious group in which members take an oath of loyalty to each other and are supervised by a male “head” or female “handmaiden.” That looks like a cult. Now she wants a seat on SCOTUS for the sole purpose of overturning Roe v. Wade. The answer is NO. Some Worry About Judicial Nominee’s Ties to a Religious GroupAmy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s choice for an appeals-court seat, belongs to People of Praise, a tight-knit, oath-bound group with considerable sway over its members.nytimes.com June 30th 2018 3,463 Retweets5,140 Likes Friday night, HBO’s Bill Maher called her a “f**kin’ nut” and said she was “Catholic. Really Catholic. I mean, really, really Catholic—like speaking in tongues.” On Thursday Mother Jones published its own concerned report (similar concerns were also printed in Politico): Mother Jones @MotherJones Amy Coney Barrett is a member of People of Praise, a charismatic covenant community in South Bend, Indiana, known for the submissive role played by women, some of whom were called “handmaids”—at least until the Handmaid’s Tale aired in 2017. It’s not anti-Catholic to ask Amy Coney Barrett about her religious group People of PraiseBefore the TV show appeared, women leaders were referred to as “handmaids.”bit.ly September 26th 2020 561 Retweets759 Likes The media hits just keep on coming. Earlier last week, Newsweek wrongly connected People of Praise to the Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel of religiously inspired sex slavery. Newsweek later corrected its piece, and outlets on the right and left fact-checked it into oblivion. In fact, Vox was unequivocal: “To be absolutely clear: People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale, and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of the other dystopian practices Atwood wrote about in her novel.” No sex slavery? That’s a relief. So, if they’re not sex slavers, what is the case against People of Praise? In 2017, the New York Times posted a report titled “Some worry about judicial nominee’s ties to a religious group.” You can read the entire thing, but the core case is contained in these three paragraphs: Some of the group’s practices would surprise many faithful Catholics. Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a “head” for men and a “handmaid” for women. The group teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority over the family. More: Current and former members say that the heads and handmaids give direction on important decisions, including whom to date or marry, where to live, whether to take a job or buy a home, and how to raise children. And: Legal scholars said that such loyalty oaths could raise legitimate questions about a judicial nominee’s independence and impartiality. The scholars said in interviews that while there certainly was no religious test test for office, it would have been relevant for the senators to examine what it means for a judicial nominee to make an oath to a group that could wield significant authority over its members’ lives. The more I looked into People of Praise, the more I had two simultaneous thoughts: First, many millions of American Christians see echoes of their lives in Judge Barrett’s story. And second, lots of folks really don’t understand both spiritual authority and spiritual community. The concerns about Barrett reflect in part the glaring gaps in religious knowledge in elite American media. In other words, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet was right when he told NPR’s Terry Gross, “We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives.” So let’s try to “get religion,” especially in the context of close-knit religious fellowships like People of Praise. First, outside of true cults, the concept of spiritual authority and spiritual “headship” is quite divorced from the lurid fears and imaginations of many Americans—and it rarely has anything at all to do with law, politics, or the American Constitution. It has much more to do with religious doctrine and religious practice—orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And words and terms that sound strange to secular ears are simply biblical and traditional to countless Christian Americans. I’ll give you an example. My family recently moved from Columbia, Tennessee, to Franklin, Tennessee, and that meant we had to move on from our beloved Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in Columbia to join a new church. When we joined that church, we took membership vows, and those vows included a promise to submit ourselves “to the government and discipline of the church.” Combine that pledge with the reality that there is a category of elders in the PCA called “ruling elders” (yep, that’s the term), and it’s easy to imagine the essays expressing concern if I were ever nominated to anything (no chance of that!)— “David French has agreed to ‘submit’ to the ‘government and discipline’ of his ‘ruling elders.’ Can he be trusted to uphold his oath of office?” It gets even worse. “French consults with his so-called ‘rulers’ on matters relating to his marriage, his career, and his finances. He even joins small groups of believers, and those groups often have leaders who ‘hold him accountable’ to the doctrines and practices of his faith.” Sounds ominous, right? It might even sound a little culty. But then you realize what’s actually happening. To the extent that the leaders exert real authority, it’s to uphold the teachings of the church—making sure that the words of the church (in the pulpit and in Sunday School) match the beliefs of the church. To the extent that the leaders impose discipline, it’s after a careful and compassionate process that provides ample opportunities for repentance—such as urging an adulterous husband to return to his wife and removing him from church membership if he does not. What about all that “interference” in marriage, careers, and finances? Well, that’s the totally normal and valuable process of providing counsel and prayer to individuals who might be facing a crossroads or a crisis. Sure, an elder or leader might have real influence, but that’s because they’ve demonstrated actual wisdom and spiritual maturity. Their words are worth hearing. Moreover, tight-knit Christian communities aren’t “weird” or “strange.” Instead, they provide an immense blessing of close fellowship, of deep friendships. Because people are highly imperfect, there is no question that some communities and some fellowships can be dysfunctional, but the mere existence of the fellowship is not suspicious. And what about the “strangeness” of the charismatic movement? While there are certainly extreme elements within charismatic Christianity (roughly defined as the strand of the faith that believes spiritual gifts—like healing, prophecy, and tongues—described in the New Testament persist today), it also happens to be one of the fastest-growing faiths in the world. A branch of Christianity that began with the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906 now counts more than half a billion believers worldwide. In fact, I have direct experience with a tight-knit group that experienced a charismatic renewal. No, it wasn’t Catholic. We were almost entirely Protestant. I didn’t speak in tongues, but I experienced perhaps the greatest period of sustained spiritual growth in my life. I made friends that have lasted a lifetime. Most of us lived together, we ate together, and—yes—we held each other accountable. We had leaders we looked up to for spiritual guidance and wisdom. What was the name of that group? The Harvard Law School Christian Fellowship. And one of our key leaders, a woman of tremendous faith, is now the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard. The rest of us are scattered across the country, and many are doing remarkable and compassionate works for our nation and for the church. And that brings me to my final point. Any evaluation of actual people in real religious fellowships can and should apply a simple scriptural test, “You will recognize them by their fruits.” And what are the fruits of the People of Praise? While every group has disgruntled members (I’m sure you can find one or two from my church), the overall response is glowing. As I wrote when Barrett’s faith first became controversial: t’s a group so nefarious that the late Cardinal Francis George wrote, “In my acquaintance with the People of Praise, I have found men and women dedicated to God and eager to seek and do His divine will. They are shaped by love of Holy Scripture, prayer and community; and the Church’s mission is richer for their presence.” It’s so dastardly that Pope Francis appointed one of its members as auxiliary bishop of Portland. And it’s so insular that it’s founded three schools that have won a total of seven [now nine] Department of Education Blue Ribbon awards. And what are the fruits of Judge Barrett’s life? She’s a mom of seven kids, two adopted and one with special needs. She clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, she was a respected law professor, and now she’s a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s already written standout opinions during her time on the bench. Progressive Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, who clerked alongside Barrett at the Supreme Court in the late 1990s, endorsed her yesterday in a Bloomberg essay. After first decrying Republican hypocrisy surrounding her nomination, Feldman says this: Yet these political judgments need to be distinguished from a separate question: what to think about Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump has told associates he plans to nominate. And here I want to be extremely clear. Regardless of what you or I may think of the circumstances of this nomination, Barrett is highly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them. I’ll say one last thing about Barrett’s faith. A fundamental aspect of faithful Christian commitment is truthfulness. “Let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.” Barrett has a reputation for integrity. So when she declares that her judicial opinions are guided by the facts of the case and the text of the law — and not the doctrines of her church or the leadership of her religious fellowship — and when that declaration is buttressed by an impressive record of scholarship and jurisprudence, Americans can be sure that Trump has nominated a serious conservative scholar and good and decent person to the highest court in the land.
