No, I won’t string you along: I doubt AG William Barr will be resigning any time soon. In case you quite sensibly took yourself away from all news sources over the weekend, the response from alumni of the Department of Justice to the interference of the Attorney General in the sentencing phase of the Roger Stone case has been to write a letter demanding his resignation. It has more than 1100 signatures, all from DoJ alumni. I think this gets to the meat of their grave concerns, although I’m tempted to quote it in its entirety:
And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle, most recently in connection with the sentencing of President Trump’s close associate, Roger Stone, who was convicted of serious crimes. The Department has a long-standing practice in which political appointees set broad policies that line prosecutors apply to individual cases. That practice exists to animate the constitutional principles regarding the even-handed application of the law. Although there are times when political leadership appropriately weighs in on individual prosecutions, it is unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case. It is even more outrageous for the Attorney General to intervene as he did here — after the President publicly condemned the sentencing recommendation that line prosecutors had already filed in court.
Such behavior is a grave threat to the fair administration of justice. In this nation, we are all equal before the law. A person should not be given special treatment in a criminal prosecution because they are a close political ally of the President. Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.
This is an important letter, of course, as it includes professionals who have served in both Democratic and Republican. But I doubt Barr will pay any attention to it. Barr, I think, comes from a part of society which is so certain of its own rectitude that it openly loathes other factions:
Among the militant progressives are many so-called ‘progressives’, but where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system? What is it that can fill the spiritual void in the hearts of the individual person? And what is the system of values that can sustain human social life? The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of fulfilling the role of religion.
This is not decay. This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion & traditional values. [ClashDaily]
And, in Barr’s mind, it’ll be those “Secularists” and other representatives of a government required to be secular that are calling for his resignation. When Barr accepted nomination to the Trump Administration, he did so rejecting the traditional Founding Father values upon which the United States was built and to which it aspires – mutual tolerance. He believes he sees destruction of traditional culture, and its replacement with chaos. That justifies any autocratic action necessary to stop.
And he’s the stopcock on the chaos he sees all around. This letter is merely static for him.
