Drat, Grey Lady. Have you no sense of humor? This may be the blog’s shortest entry. The boy scout for all seasons, James Comey, wrote an opinion regarding The Spray Tan Man as the eater of souls. The obvious point Mr. Comey missed is that the already soulless need not fret.
James Comey, “How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Barr,” The New York Times, 2 May 2019, A25 (www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html).
James Comey’s explication of how President Trump corrupts and reduces those around him is well taken. However, Attorney General William Barr’s conduct suggests his soul was well masticated before he entered the administration and Mr. Trump devoured whole what little remained of it.
Muddying the findings of the Mueller report became a cottage industry in GOP World. If obfuscation is the game, who better to enlist than Victor Davis Hanson? Ever the good soldier, he applied himself with gusto to a willful misreading – if there was a reading – of the Special Counsel’s conclusions. This was not a difficult letter to write, since George Terwilliger III had served as Mr. Hanson’s warmup act.
Victor Davis Hanson, “Progressives Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 May 2019, A9; Yahoo, 9 May 2019 (https://news.yahoo.com/progressives-face-bleak-post-mueller-103001666.html). If The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared on Yahoo.
“Hanson Misrepresents Mueller Report Findings,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch, 16 May 2019, A10 (https://richmond.com/opinion/letters-to-editor/letters-to-the-editor-may-16-2019-hanson-misrepresents-mueller-report-findings/article_26be70e6-9913-57d2-88a5-e83a1a4b74ca.html).
Former Attorney General William Barr had his defenders. Whether Thorazine should be prescribed to address their sapiential disarrangement and their tenuous contact with reality makes for good cocktail conversation. Maybe they’re just cynical and dishonest. Whatever the case, onetime acting Attorney General George T. Terwilliger III’s portrayal of William Barr as a paragon of rectitude and the lion of rule of law was perhaps the zenith of Barr apologetics. Then again, Mr. Terwilliger’s balletic skirting of inconvenient, displeasing facts is perhaps a primer on the genesis of the proclivities fueling Trumpism. The Former Fabricator in Chief is not the aberration that GOP worthies would have everyone believe he is. A letter was sent to The Washington Post.
George Terwilliger III, “Barr Acted by the Book,” The Washington Post, 19 April 2019, A15 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/william-barr-did-this-nation-a-great-service-he-shouldnt-be-attacked/2019/04/18/a2e83760-6221-11e9-9412-daf3d2e67c6d_story.html).
“Fallout from the Mueller Report,” The Washington Post, 24 April 2019, A22 (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mueller-report-is-out-now-what/2019/04/23/cbcaab9a-6537-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html).
Nothing appeals more than spewing invective into the vicinity of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. In a rational world, Mr. Sessions would never have been confirmed as attorney general. He is the same man who couldn’t pass muster for a federal judgeship in 1986 because of his bigotry. Was it to be supposed that he grew more tolerant in the interim? Anyway, he had the brass ring in a death grip and it would have to be prized from his fingers. It may have been just as well that he remained in place for a while if it ensured that the country would endure less of William Barr or someone worse. Mr. Sessions is a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging doofus. William Barr is competently malevolent. There remains little sport in lambasting Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of shooting catfish in a barrel. The Washington Post passed on this response to its news reporting. I can’t imagine why, he says to himself ironically.
Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz, and Matt Zapotosky, “Jeff Sessions Says He Plans to Stay in Role, Despite Trump’s Comments about Him,” The Washington Post, 20 July 2017 (www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-says-he-plans-to-stay-in-role-despite-trumps-comments-about-him/2017/07/20/527e53d4-6d51-11e7-9c15-177740635e83_story.html).
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s determination to remain U. S. Attorney General is unfortunate. Mr. Sessions’ antediluvian attitude toward voting rights, his antipathy toward immigrants, and his resolve to resuscitate a failed war on drugs should have disqualified him from the office. He has blemished the position by enabling Mr. Trump’s basest, most autocratic impulses. His lone unsordid act – recusal from the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election – was not motivated by principle but by backlash against his dissembling under oath.
In the face of Mr. Trump’s recent and somewhat bizarre criticism of him, integrity demands that Mr. Sessions resign. Nothing indeed would so become Mr. Sessions in his time as Attorney General as his leaving of it, if he can muster sufficient principle to use his departure to make a statement: the Attorney General serves at the President’s will but is not and cannot be the chief executive’s lackey.