George Will: The Criminalization of Politics

The impulse to ferret corruption from politics corrupts the criminal justice system when it causes overzealous prosecutors and judges to improvise novel interpretations of the law of bribery. Consider Robert McDonnell’s case.

Virginia’s former Republican governor has been sentenced to prison for actions that he could not have reasonably anticipated would be declared felonies under a dangerous judicial expansion of federal law defining bribery of public officials. Friday the Supreme Court will decide whether to review McDonnell’s conviction.

Compelling reasons for doing so are explained in friend-of-the-court briefs submitted by, among others, 31 current governors; 60 former state attorneys general (six from Virginia filed their own); 13 former federal officials, including two former U.S. attorneys general, and former legal counsels to every president starting with Ronald Reagan; and three law professors from Harvard and the University of Virginia. All agree that McDonnell’s conviction resulted from unreasonably stretching the understanding of quid pro quo corruption — you do X for me, I will do Y for you...

McDonnell had an unseemly relationship with a Richmond businessman who showered the governor with substantial gifts, loans, and perquisites. Virginia law permits state officials to accept gifts, and never during McDonnell’s trial did prosecutors suggest that he had violated state law. 

If the businessman hoped that McDonnell would take official government actions benefiting his diet supplement enterprise, he was disappointed. The Supreme Court and other courts have defined an “official act” as the actual exercise of government power. The businessman wanted certain acts — state funding for his firm, a state study to validate his supplement, and inclusion of it in Virginia’s health plan. None of these acts occurred. (read more)

Feds dump women and children illegal immigrants into border states.

Having interfered with States ability to manage illegal immigration by suing, and having invited illegal immigration through speeches and executive orders, federal agencies are now dumping illegal immigrants by the busload and by the planeload into border states, mostly women and children arriving on the promise of not being turned away, access to discounted tuition, and various perks. They are responding to pull not only to push, evident in the high number of children characterized by Obama as "dreamers."

What’s happening on our southern border right now is horrifying, but it’s not unexpected.  The people who caused it will never feel an instant of remorse for what they’ve done.  And they’ll grow increasingly less interested in what the legal citizens of the United States have to say about immigration policy.  What’s your plan for dealing with the thousands of unaccompanied minors who are being shipped to our doorstep?

Observers all knew Obama's final two and half years will see extra-legal activity due to the presidents known unwillingness to work with and through Congress, and many did predict he'd go full on Cloward-Piven to collapse our system of government and usher in a new one all by himself.

But it is not by himself. It is through his Party and through government agencies under the executive branch. That means those branches have turned sinister, it means those government branches act with impunity. And what all that invites is even more severe far right reaction as seen in Europe and in England, if you count England as separate from Europe as many British do.

Children warehoused at Nogales, Arizona.

Who organized these busloads and planeloads? How can they get away with such lawlessness? How can this activity go on without being countered, and hard?

There is no end to the obvious cynicism. As they say, do, read the whole thing, it is eye-opening reporting by John Hayward.

Human Events.com Cloward-Piven at the Border.

http://www.humanevents.com/2014/06/09/cloward-piven-at-the-border/