Michael J. Stern writes in the Chicago Tribune:
. . . .
Failed leadership
Each of these daggers to the heart of DOJ made me question if the DOJ I knew and dedicated my professional career to still existed in some semblance of what I knew it to be. Then, a story hit the internet recently that the attorney general of the United States, while at a rally of right-wing high school students, chimed in with chants from students who were screaming “Lock her up.” And, according to reports, while repeating the mob-inspired anti-Clinton creed, Sessions laughed.
I didn’t believe it so I searched for the video and found it. There was the head of law enforcement in the United States laughing and joining the crazed chants of an angry gang of teenagers calling for Trump’s defeated political opponent to be locked up.
When I saw the attorney general in that video, I felt sick to my stomach. Not a figurative sick that comes with reading or seeing something that disgusts me. I felt literally sick, like a dissolving pain that comes from accidentally taking a double dose of my daily fistful of vitamins. Everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for — blind justice, equality, fairness — it all evaporated in that moment for me.
I know that there are still a lot of federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents who do their jobs, day in and day out, with the impartiality they promised when they made a commitment to the Department of Justice. But, it must be demoralizing to watch your boss dismantle all that DOJ stands for and inch the department closer and closer to the autocratic banana republic system of justice that Trump admires and covets.
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Read Michael’s full article at the above link. I know just how he feels.
Sessions’s disgusting performance before a group of young neo-Nazis was clear proof of his unsuitability for public office. Remember, while Ol’ Gonzo was up there chortling away and stoking the fires of intolerance and ignorance (most of those kids probably had no idea why they were chanting “lock her up” except that some rightist organizer told them to do so, and Sessions encouraged and egged them on) migrant kids whose only “crime” was to come to the US with their parents seeking justice were suffering in separation and torturous conditions in the “New American Gulag” that Sessions has created.
I think Michael eloquently articulates how most of us who dedicated our career to serving the cause of justice in the Department of Justice feel when we watch the unqualified racist xenophobic Sessions rip apart the Constitution, destroy integrity, mock the rule of law, defy common sense, trash human decency, and destroy responsible Government.
Amazing (if depressing) how quickly an institution can be compromised and trashed by having such an evil and corrupt person in charge for a relatively short period of time.
PWS
07-28-18