In a trial that began Monday in federal court, Mr. Arpaio stands accused of criminal contempt of court for having thumbed his nose at a federal judge who ordered a halt to Mr. Arpaio’s traffic patrols, which singled out Hispanics on the basis of nothing more than their appearance, for immigration enforcement.
.. Lawyers for Mr. Arpaio, who is 85, have tried out an array of legal strategies in his defense, variously arguing that he did not understand the order , or that the order was ambiguous or invalid.
.. Unfortunately for the sheriff, the most damning evidence against him are the words he himself uttered
.. “I’m still gonna do what I’m doing,” Mr. Arpaio told the media in April 2012 . “I’m still gonna arrest illegal aliens.”
.. The sheriff’s insolence — an open admission that he would persist in conduct the judge had ruled was discriminatory — translated into open defiance.
.. the trial of Mr. Arpaio is the direct result of his own arrogance, and of contempt not just for a single federal judge’s order but also for the standards, norms and values of a civilized society.
Is Kamala Harris the Future of American Politics?
she can lay claim to a style that is the future of American politics: Her combination of incivility, bullying, and victimhood makes her the perfect reflection of our current moment.
.. Harris clearly tried to bully both Sessions and Rosenstein, cutting them off as they spoke and not giving them a chance to speak before she moved on to a new insinuation.
.. Male chauvinism is real and deplorable, as is racism. But what actually happened in the committee hearings bore little resemblance to the narrative that quickly took hold about them. Harris was not the victim here; a former district attorney, she was actually the one throwing her weight around in questioning Rosenstein and Sessions. McCain sought Burr’s intervention to begin with because in both instances, Harris had interrupted the witness, badgering him and rudely refusing to let him answer as she sought to produce damning clips for viral consumption
.. Harris is obviously not the first grandstanding senator in history to bully a witness in this manner. But it is, to put it mildly, unusual for cabinet-level officials to be treated like mafia dons.
.. there was no doubt that Harris was playing to her party’s base rather than “seeking the truth.”
.. Yet if the claims of Harris and her supporters were pure bunk, they were also brilliant political theater.
.. McCain’s and Burr’s pleas for civility in the committee — especially when a former colleague was being questioned — may have been easy to spin as racist or sexist, but they were really a feeble gesture of dissent against a sea change in American political culture.
.. By deliberately flouting conventional notions of civility in her questioning, Harris gratified the desire of liberals for their political leaders to get rough with the opposition. But in then posing as a victim who was being silenced
.. As the party that has linked itself inextricably to identity politics at the expense of its traditional working-class base, Democrats are particularly charmed by the idea of a minority woman standing tall in the face of abuse from white, male conservatives.
- .. In theory, Harris could ride some combination of
- an Obama-style appeal to minority voters,
- her newly burnished credentials as a feminist victim, and
- an appeal to the appetite of more militant “resisters” for total war on the GOP
all the way to the Democratic nomination in 2020.
.. Her incivility and appeal to identity politics may be everything that is wrong with contemporary politics.
Ted Nugent once said Obama should ‘suck on my machine gun.’ Now he wants to tone down the ‘hateful rhetoric’
Musician Ted Nugent is known for speaking his mind about the Second Amendment and hunting, but especially on politicians. He once said then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama should “suck my machine gun.”
.. But after Wednesday’s shooting at a congressional baseball practice, Nugent has decided to be “more selective with my rants and in my words.”
“At the tender age of 69, my wife has convinced me I just can’t use those harsh terms,” he said on the 77 WABC radio program Thursday. “I cannot and will not and I encourage even my friends, slash, enemies on the left, in the Democrat and liberal world, that we have got to be civil to each other.”
“I’m not going to engage in that kind of hateful rhetoric anymore.”
.. And Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), who was on the baseball field during the shooting, condemned what he called “political, rhetorical terrorism” practiced by both sides... he apologized for calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel”.. “I’m not backing down jack squat,” he said, but was taking action “so some idiot doesn’t misinterpret that I’m recommending violence.”
The Problem with ‘Lock Them Up’ Politics Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448050/trump-campaign-russia-lock-them-mentality
The criminalization of political differences destroys what’s left of civility in our political culture.
.. For a year, Democrats listened to crowds at Trump rallies and even the delegates at the Republican National Convention engage in chants of “lock her up.” Today, the Internet is reverberating with Democrats engaging in some virtual revenge as the latest leaks about the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians have indicated that Jared Kushner is a “person of interest.”
That means liberals are chortling about the president’s son-in-law having to choose between a jail cell and informing on his wife’s father.
.. Flynn is, of course, in no position to complain about people hoping to see him in jail, since he was the one that led the crowd in “lock her up” chants at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
.. The problem is that both parties seem to have lost the ability to oppose an administration or candidate without seeking to “lock up” the other side.
.. The current process by which foes are delegitimized means that all too many Americans don’t merely disagree with their opponents. The questioning of motives has now escalated to the point where Democrats believe that Republicans are not merely hard-hearted tools of the corporate class but willing to commit treason to gain a political advantage or increase profits to private interests.
.. many on the right not only condoned Trump’s birther smears about Obama but actually thought Hillary Clinton wanted four Americans to be murdered by terrorists in Benghazi and deliberately exposed U.S. secrets to foreign powers.
.. tolerance of opposing views in the public square has been discarded in favor of a Facebook-feed mentality in which all ideas and persons who don’t confirm our pre-existing prejudices and assumptions can be deleted and “defriended.”
The result isn’t just the collapse of civility that is taken for granted on both sides of the aisle but a political cycle in which the impulse to criminalize differences has become the default reaction to losing an election
If that is where we are, America is not merely a bifurcated nation but well on its way to banana-republic status.