Democrats Depreciating the "Rule of Law"

[Steve R.]

The Democrats contend that they support the "Rule of Law" and that no one is above the law. As time progress the Democrats supposed support for the "Rule of Law" becomes evermore fanciful. One example that has been around for a while has been the imposition, by governors and mayors, for greater restrictions on people congregating citing public health reasons but then blatantly ignoring that rationale by supporting those protesting against racism.

A more recent, but small story along these lines concerns the Mayor of Seattle, Jenny Durkan. Seattle Mayor Durkan asks City Council to investigate, possibly expel socialist councilwoman over protest actions.

"Durkan cited city law that allows the council to “punish or expel” a member for “disorderly or otherwise contemptuous behavior” -- in this case spearheading a protest at Durkan’s home, which is supposed to be at a secret location due to a state confidentiality program and safety concerns. The mayor has received threats in connection with her previous role as U.S. attorney.

Sawant allegedly led a crowd of protesters to Durkan's home and delivered a speech outside over the weekend.

“All of us have joined hundreds of demonstrations across the city, but Council Member Sawant and her followers chose to do so with reckless disregard of the safety of my family and children,” Durkan wrote."

So, when it came to supposedly peaceful protestors seizing parts of downtown Seattle and intimidating the people working and resideing in that area, the Mayor just referred to that as a "summer of love" and refused to act (until today). Yet, when the protestors turned some of their attention to Mayor Durkan, she all of a sudden became concerned with the law.

Since posting, ran across this article: Jenny Durkan, decrying socialist lawlessness, now reaps what she sows

Durkan, the anti-law-and-order lady who oh-so-cavalierly let anarchists deface the local police department and take over blocks of Seattle streets, and then toss out all normal societal standards of law and order — this same lady now wants to demand a lawful and orderly investigation into perceived unlawful and disorderly behavior?

In another example, the people supporting Black Lives Matter painted graffiti on some walls an illegal act. Some women attempted to clean-up the graffiti but were accused of racism. Driver accuses 3 women of racism for cleaning BLM graffiti off D.C. federal building. The Mayor of Washington D.C., Muriel Bowser, allowed similar graffiti to be painted on the City streets. According to NBC news: "The mayor said that the people who painted it were from the D.C. Public Works Department." Whether the street graffiti should be considered legal or not, is unstated. Nevertheless, Judicial Watch has responded in kind: D.C. sued over Black Lives Matter painted on city streets. Judicial Watch asked that it be allowed to paint its own message on a city street, but was essentially denied by the city through what could be considered (subjective) obstructionist tactics. In this situation the city and some people (such as the person accusing the women of racism for removing graffiti) are promoting the use of public spaces to make a pro Black Lives Matter political statement that may offend some and apparently shutting the door on political statements that may be in opposition to Black Lives Matter. Seems that violates the right of free speech.

 

[Isaac]

Random thoughts:
It is as if the whole country needs a reminder of certain basic rules:

- Don't destroy public property without permission
- Don't block traffic, unless you have a permit to do so
- Obey orders given by an on-duty police officer
Wow, following those 3 seemingly infantile things would have avoided a lot of unnecessary injuries, loss of life and businesses, and increased polarization between opinion groups.

Once growing up in the north, as little kids in winter, a couple of us made LARGE snowballs and placed them in the roadway in the rural area where we lived. Boy, did we get a good spanking. It's always been my understanding that cars drive in roads, whereas people generally use sidewalks, unless they are crossing the road, in which case you look both ways for cars first. Bigger cities have slightly different customs, but intentionally blocking traffic on a whim isn't allowed. I understood that if I deliberately destroyed someone else's property, or public property, that was considered a criminal act. I never really "mulled over" a scenario whereby I might wrestle with, beat/punch, or pull weapons off of a police officer, but I suppose if I had, I would also imagine I'd get hurt badly, or even shot. I was familiar with Protests, but they seemed filled with passionate, well meaning people who tried to model good behavior while protesting, to persuade people of their cause. People definitely didn't always like me, but it didn't occur to me to blame anyone but me when I failed to achieve something. If I wanted to be successful at work, I knew I had to be a bit of a conformist--I'd conform to the style, dress code and behavior expected of me at work, even if it wasn't my thing. Wear a suit to the interview even if it was hot. Give myself a haircut even if I felt like having purple hair down to my waist. All simple and silly sounding things, but after all - it was their company, not mine. I'd play by the rules if I wanted to join. If I wanted to change things I might join an employee committee and make suggestions within the given framework.
There are myriad of causes I feel strongly about, but I mostly act with my vote, and in the supporting of free speech, and letting parents be involved in choosing their kids' education. In tort law there is the concept of coming into the court with "clean hands". I know that if one reacts to despicable, lawless events by simply becoming despicable and lawless ones self, one is not really being intellectually honest with ones self, and if any power is gained by that, it is the power of a tyrant. I watch the news across the world, and I appreciate all the more our free speech, and our rule of law.

Up until recently, I honestly thought that the majority of people's parents taught them those kinds of things when they were little. I actually still think they do, but bullies create fear & silence. The last few months have opened my eyes a lot. Both conservatives (a bit on the quarantine issues), and liberals (a lot) have done bullying and intimidation over the last few months. If someone doesn't like someone else they post their home address on the internet--You cannot interpret that as anything other than creating a threatening situation, and it's shameful.

If we exemplify a nation where people with opinions simply traffic in threats, physical intimidation and general lawlessness to get their way, what will the long term look like? Whatever group with the most brute strength at the time, and will to hard-fisted exercise it, will have their way. What has that gotten us in the past? Some brutally oppressive situations. What will that get us in the future? Probably various versions of the same.

The nation desperately needs a stronger sense of unity, but I am not sure this will be even possible if at least most people aren't starting from the premise of personal responsibility and obeying day to day laws.

Try persuading anyone of anything, while you are intimidating or punishing them. Their agreement will be a false one and a strong resentment will take its place.

 

[pbaldy]

Well said Issac. Self-responsibility has gone out the window, as has "do unto others...".

 

[Pat Hartman]

I hate to assign blame but the media is at fault for lots of our problems. If it bleeds, it leads is their mantra so the more chaos and hate they can spew, the better. The reports I see on network news and CNN all cite "mostly" peaceful protesting and don't show any videos of the violence and destruction so a large section of the population has no clue what is actually going on. I don't know how we can overcome that. Trump tries with his tweets but it's basically he said, they said and he's preaching to the choir for the most part and the people who need to see the downside of allowing people to run wild in the streets never do. I'm pretty sure that the Republicans and sane Democrats in hiding think that if Biden wins, all this will simmer down. They'd be wrong. Remember why we don't negotiate with Terrorists? The mob in NY wanted the mayor to reduce the police budget by $1 billion. If he did that, they would disband so the mayor did what they asked and they just changed their demands.

 

[Steve R.]

California is now proposing to eliminate its equal rights amendment. California Proposition 16, Repeal Proposition 209 Affirmative Action Amendment (2020) Since this on the ballot for the November election, one could say that the state of California is complying with the rule-of-law. The amendment the state is proposing to eliminate reads: "The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." Isn't this what the Democrats want, a society were discrimination would illegal?

So why is California opening the door to the possibility of legal discrimination, despite the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Shirley Weber, as one of the sponsors for this amendment provided one reason: "As we look around the world, we see there is an urgent cry — an urgent cry for change. After 25 years of quantitative and qualitative data, we see that race-neutral solutions cannot fix problems steeped in race."

The American Spectator had this article: California Now to Discriminate in the Name of Equality.

California State Sen. Ling Ling Chang (R-29) argues, “I have experienced racial discrimination so I know what that’s like. But the answer to racial discrimination is not more discrimination…. ACA 5 legalizes racial discrimination and that’s wrong.”

Welcome to California's 1984 were we must implement racist policies to end racism. Should the law be passed, it would still document that the Democrats are moving away from the rule-of-law where all people would be treated equally as it would allow preferential treatment based on race or other factors. A circumvention of the federal Civil Rights Act.

 

[Isaac]

the answer to discrimination not being more discrimination. That's almost word-for-word what I have said several times including on this forum. It is sad that they would seek to do away with that neutrality. Then again, like I've said before, given how much this movement has pushed its luck in the first 4 weeks I'm comfortable with the fact that the next four months is going to be a long time for people to see it's true colors, no pun intended. And most likely many people can make a good decision by November.

 

[Steve R.]

Breaking news, at least in terms of the date of this posting, is that the police officer (Rolfe) who killed Brooks in Atlanta has filed an unlawful termination lawsuit against the Mayor of Atlanta. My initial internet search on this developing story only uncovered one article by NPR, so far, concerning this: "Former Atlanta Police Officer Who Shot Rayshard Brooks Sues City Over Firing". (I also posted comments here: Coronavirus - are we all doomed?, but believe it warrants its own post.)

From the perspective of Democrats depreciating the rule-of-law, Rolfe was fired without any regard to due-process. NPR in reporting the coldly listing "facts" leaves out a lot of critical points and fails to questions the legitimacy of Rolfe's dismissal. The most obvious is that NPR implies that this was a racist incident, but never provides any evidence of that. The article degenerates into a case of making unsupported accusations of racism to "justify" taking an adverse action against a person without due-process. Note that this article appears in a section titled: "Live Updates: Protests For Racial Justice".

The article "goes out of its way" to state that Rolfe is White and that Brooks is Black since it fits the narrative of Whites oppressing Blacks. However, the article never mentions that the Mayor (Bottoms) or the Fulton County District Attorney (Howard) are Black. So one could assume, using NPR's logic, that Blacks are unfairly using the legal system to persecute Whites.

Democrats continue to depreciate the rule-of-law for political gain and are abetted by a compliant dishonest media (in some cases).

 

[Isaac]

It does bother me that really anyone, but police officers included, would get fired from a job based on accusations. Ideally, if money permits, they should be suspended with pay until our nation's agreed-upon, accepted legal process can adjudicate. Then the business should be free to take whatever the worst possible action that agrees with the legal system's conclusion, is. That seems so simple and non-controversial to me....and pretty simple to implement.
The only exception might be that not every business should be expected to pay people for free until final trial results that can be years in coming. So maybe suspended without pay.
But I see SO many stories of businesses simply firing people or suspending teachers without pay at anyone's mere say-so, a simple verbal accusation.
In my opinion, the area where this has run MOST rampant would be sex-related crimes / accusations. I know that for many years, perhaps, accusers weren't taken seriously. But like always, our society's knee-jerk overreaction simply swung the pendulum too far the other way. Usually when these type of accusations surface, the accuser now gets the privilege and comfort of near-total anonymity, while the accused name is published one very paper far and wide, and often let go from their career position due to someone's say-so. Anyone who doesn't think this is clearly unfair given our nation's agreed-upon principle "innocent until proven guilty", well-I just don't get that. (And, one could argue, ESPECIALLY because sex-related crimes carry a particular stigma and shame for the accused, and tend to be one of the more evidence-free categories, where the word of one has to be simply evaluated against the word of another. But I didn't mean to go there--really these principles ought to apply to all crimes, period.)
We as a political society always seem to tend to solve problems of "inequality" or "unfairness" by simply creating more inequality & unfairness going in another direction--as if that makes it right.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The Kavanaugh hearings were the first time I had seen this guilty until proven innocent in action. It was absolutely terrifying. It was like watching a train wreck. I couldn't take my eyes off cspan while the hearings were going on. It could happen to anyone but you are in more danger if you don't follow the left's current view of the world. I tried to talk to several liberals while this was going on because I thought they would be rational enough to see the danger. They sort of did but they still thought he shouldn't be confirmed "just in case". They simply couldn't put themselves in Kavanaugh's shoes because they couldn't believe anyone could hate them so much that they would be falsely accused. It was like talking to a bowl of jello.

I can't wait until we see lawsuits from the citizens who were hurt by the various mayors' orders for local police to stand down and let the rioters loot and burn.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I saw an article on the Seattle C.H.O.P. zone and the lawsuits from business owners not more than two weeks ago. As soon as the zone was re-opened there was a fleet of lawyers waiting to file. For once they didn't need to chase an ambulance for a massive damage suit. Seattle may defund the police the hard way - bankruptcy.