"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
KAKISTOCRACY: Billy The Bigot Barr Gives CYA Interview, Perhaps In Attempt To Save Law License!
Lowering The Barr by Randall Enos, Easton, CT Republished By License
Bill Barr Consigliere Artist: Pat Bagley Salt Lake Tribune Reproduced under license
In The Atlantic, journalist Jonathan Karl gives us a short look at Trump attorney general William Barr’s last weeks in power according to William Barr himself, who was kind enough to grace Karl with a series of interviews out of the innate goodness of his heart. Oh, and because Barr is now seen by many as the most thoroughly partisan and corrupt attorney general in a generation, which is going to seriously cut down on future speaking fees if he can’t figure out how to massage the record back into something vaguely defensible.
The actual news out of it is Not Damn Much, but this is a good opportunity to revisit the First Rule Of News Consumption: Be aware of the source. From the nation’s top powerbrokers to man-on-the-street interviewees, anyone talking to a reporter about their own doings is going to tell that reporter the most flattering version of events they think they can get away with. Many of the most important details about what Trump and his core team did in their attempts to overturn a United States election remain murky because those most in the know, like ex-House Republican turned chief of staff Mark Meadows, are clamming up.
. . . .
Great, super. So again we have a situation in which everyone around Trump was pretty damn certain he had gone off the rails, jumped the trolley, sprung a brain-leak, and had become devoid of marbles but nobody in government, from Secret Service on down, was willing to toss him in a burlap sack, tie it shut, and declare that Mike Pence was taking charge because the sitting president had developed a serious case of bananapants.
. . . .
**************
You an read the full story at the link.
The key takeaway for progressives is that Barr is the guy that AG Merrick Garland HONORED by appointing 17 of his flawed selections to an Immigration Judiciary already reeling from a one-sided infusion of judges with questionable qualifications into a system weaponized against individual asylum seekers, other migrants, and their lawyers.
So far zero (0) progressive judges from the community of experts and advocates who helped show Barr the exit and elect Biden and Harris have been tapped for these “life or death” quasi-judicial positions. Rumor has it that’s about to change. But, that will hardly restore scholarship, due process, and balance to a disastrously “out of wack” deportation railroad!
