US Department of Justice: Back On Line?

Lazarus Quivers

Can we move Attorney General Holder's gurney from the ICU now?

For years the Republicans at both state and federal levels have enjoyed what amounts to a "do not touch" invulnerability from the US Department of Justice.  MeanMesa has watched in horror as state after state, at least those suffering under the suffocating, regressive death grip of entirely "red" state governments, have passed horrid little local laws which brazenly "flew directly into the face" of Supreme Court precedents, Constitutionality decisions, societal norms, division of church and state and even common decency.

The direly fractured Republicans have been running wild.  The attacks resemble firing in panic into a brush line obscuring any real targets.  Adding to the destructive chaos, when considered individually, these repressive targets are being selected incoherently, that is, in a manner quite disassociated from any form of comprehensible, cohesive "master plan."

That may be a good thing, but probably not.  "Hail Mary's" when inflicted on a national scale, tend to be rather destructive.

It seems that any strategy leading to the destruction of any organized collection of established law has slipped away completely, leaving only desperate, sporadic, manic attacks directed only by the whims of the tragically flimsy, aberrant psychology of the GOP's base voter base.

Anxious to refute any casual claim that such a provocative statement is merely geriatric ranting and raving, it's probably a good spot for a "factual overview."  We can look at developments in the oligarchs' party at both the federal and the state level to get a clear idea of what has become an emboldened disregard for settled law across the country.

We can also review the suddenly "re-invigorated" Department of Justice responses to the continuing "supra-legal" gambits of these unconvincingly brave scofflaws with such a penchant for ignoring laws.

Yes, We Still Have a US Department of Justice

The Holder Justice Department has been essentially invisible for the first six years of the Obama Administration.

During this time we have watched -- helplessly -- as rogue tea baggers have literally eviscerated a grisly mass of the most cherished American legal traditions from the hands of citizens.  One incremental "victory" after another for the owners of the Republican Party has left those of us expecting relief from the federal judicial in a dreary malaise.

The same "string of victories" has, predictably, produced roughly the effect of an overloaded syringe full of heroin and methyl amphetamine on the already unstable, beer guzzling GOP hill billies and bigots as they dance like grotesque, semi-conscious puppets for their oligarch masters.

The 2014 GOP: No Lip Stick

The child molester travelling with the Texas GOP candidate for governor called the President a "sub-human mongrel."

Limbaugh, the morbidly obese, drug addled voice of the Republican Party, burped forth a "man boy" claim that the First Lady had a "fat ass."

The toothless GOP war mongers -- led by the "suspiciously romantic man-boy pair" of McCain and Graham have never relented with their fear soaked demands for another reckless war.

The House of Representatives, after exhausting every other excuse for ignoring their public constituency [of course their REAL constituency inhabits the dark rooms where the lobbyists hand out checks...], published the "last gasp" incendiary bombs to explain their derisive neglect of popular issues like immigration reform by simply stating that they "couldn't trust the President."

They perfected this technique while they were ignoring the 80% public opinion in favor of back ground checks.

It would be a confusing mistake to seek out only direct DOJ engagement for some of these examples.  After all, since the US DOJ is hardly a "transparent" part of the government which openly broadcasts its intentions and strategies to deal with such outrages, we may rest quite comfortably with the assumption that even when judicial action seems far removed from Washington, it's not actually all that distant.  Even when the action originates from courts at other levels, it's still very likely that it's been "touched by the hand" of the Attorney General or the DOJ.

MeanMesa largely adheres to the unspoken notion that DOJ has been "placed in sleep mode" very intentionally by a President overly eager not to incite a civil war.  Obama knew in 2008 that the Congressional and red state bigots were already far too close to being the equivalent to "cases of wet dynamite in the trunk of an abandoned Pinto" to "tolerate" very much Presidential independence directed by a black man, but this has now evaporated along with even the existentially remote prospect of the oligarchs ever allowing anything they didn't like.

Had the President unveiled his reluctant engagement of "executive authority" without previously exhausting the American voter's last flicker of hope for a functional government, the GOP's racists would have lurched violently into their favorite anti-democracy  jingoism of "states rights," voter fraud, gun control, FEMA camps and the rest.  Now, however, the apparently endless oligarch imposed austerity has become a "detail-free" agony, devoid of explanation, success, justification or excuse.

Trouble in "Oligarch-ville"

THIS is the Republican Party in 2014.  Let's have a look at some specific examples.  What signs can we see that the DOJ has "come back to life" like our distant cometary probe?

Governor Christie's Witch Dunking

Yes, New Jersey Democrats have decided to "completely reveal" every cob web running from the labyrinthine Governor's office to the George Washington bridge shut down, but along the way the same spiders have collected half a dozen extremely crooked real estate development deals, hundreds of millions of suspiciously "re-allocated" hurricane Sandy funds, multi-million dollar parking lots with $1 per year annual lease contracts and more.

Is Eric Holder's Justice Department driven by a political agenda, or are the department's recent prosecutorial decisions simply signs of overzealousness? 

The Justice Department has focused on two prominent Republicans, announcing a corruption indictment of former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and launching an active and very public criminal investigation into the antics of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration. In doing so, federal prosecutors have created at least the appearance that they are targeting two men who have been touted as plausible candidates for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

{Read the entire Daily Kos article here]

All this could have been comfortably dispatched as merely "state politics," but brazenly purloined federal money continued to show up at every street corner.  So, the patient silhouette of the DOJ quietly appeared in the shadows behind the state legislature subpoenas.

By necessity, it's to be a light touch.  The oligarchs' obedient media is salivating in anticipation with the prospect of painting a picture of federal prosecutors amputating the arms and legs of the GOP's 2016 Presidential "golden boy."

Governor Walker's Late Term Exhumation

Wisconsin failed to recall this Koch employee, but now, not even the "brothers' money" seems deep enough to resuscitate the heavily soiled corpse of Scott Walker.  The Governor's general staff is now riddled with the embarrassing vacancies left by staffers doing time as inmates for violating election campaign laws.

What's buried here? [source]

What had been a deliriously delicious tea bag festival of burping and bellowing hill billies only a year ago has become a doggedly unappeasable, painful daily expose' of "miscreants acting badly."  This might "look" like the wheels and gears of Wisconsin justice slowly grinding the grist of local law, but we can see the silent hand of federal justice in the back ground.

Finesse is everything.  The billionaires' "emergency Plan B" 2016 Presidential  candidate had been made basically invulnerable to political assault under the protection of the Koch's millions, but the growing scandal is probably cutting this awful potential candidate off at the knees.

The Wheels Fall Off the GOP's Rape, Abortion, Birth Control Truck

We know that Satanic women's health issues are the GOP's favorite things when it comes to juicing up the overly biblical American Legion crowd, and we have watched literally hundreds of red state legislative bills gurgling to the surface of the "red state cess pool" since 2008.  Every farmer suddenly injected into his state legislature by ALEC sponsorship seems to have donned his bow tie, hitched up his belly and dutifully lurched into "attack the gals mode."

At first, even though all this state level nonsense seemed to fly in the face of Roe, the federal DOJ appeared paralysed -- unwilling and unprepared to respond in the defense of settled law.  Now, however, these regressive state anti-women laws have met a crippling series of lower court reversals.  The damage may have been done as women's health clinics were decimated in the swamps of the paleolithic South and the wildly religionist fly-over states, but -- thanks largely to the discrete intervention of the DOJ -- the nation-wide trend is clear and stable.

Supreme Court precedents apply to everyone -- regardless of what the preacher and the coach might belch out at the local revival tent hootenanny.  It is the responsibility of the US DOJ to "make this happen."  When the GOP adopts a political platform founded on ignoring established law, the dreams might be intoxicating, but the reality is far less delectable.

In this perhaps overly broad example, the GOP's little talking monkeys have dug themselves a "bottomless pit" with American women voters who don't seriously believe that they still live in the brutally patriarchal old testament.  These voting females don't like rape; they use birth control; and, they are horrified when sold out Congressmen start reaching for their private parts with half-baked state "uterus control" laws. All across the bright red ALEC states MeanMesa suspects that the DOJ is eagerly awaiting the first wounded plaintiff with standing.

It's No Longer "Open Season" on Mother Earth

A glacier of corporate "profit" has steadily flowed into billionaire pockets from all the money "saved" by sabotaging environmental laws.  The oligarchs have been transporting shale crude on obsolete rail road tracks -- and pocketing the savings as "profit."  They have been ignoring inspection regulations for fertilizer plants and above ground chemical storage tanks -- and pocketing the savings as "profit."  The "energy" companies -- spelled "c-o-a-l" -- have "saved" the maintenance money on their obscene slurry ponds -- and pocketing the savings as "profit."

Further, these are not exclusively environmental crimes.  The evil thread runs like poisoned drinking water directly through various crimson tinged, flaming magenta, tea bag governors' offices to the tatters of state environmental agencies where even the contents of waste baskets have been bought and sold to "the regulated."

DOJ seems to have finally located an interest in these cases, too.

[Read more:
Federal Criminal Investigation of NC Govt Duke Energy for Dan River Coal Ash Spill
West Virginia chemical spill exposes new water risk ]

Minority Government May Not Be Permanent

Yes, the sold out Supreme Court majority obediently pretended to be "long suffering, deeply wounded" Libertarian victims when they were commanded to pass Citizens United.  But it didn't end there.  During the Bush W. autocracy Republican nobodies such as Karl Rove and others publicly announced their ambition to make the GOP a permanent fixture controlling Washington.

The same anti-democracy strategy then mortally wounded the Voting Rights Act, but now the DOJ, like Ruth gleaning in the ancient fields of Boaz, has scrupulously collected the remnants of that old Voting Rights Act and actively prosecuted a promising collection of red state voter suppression schemes.

The full task will include other things besides obliterating racist and jingoistic voter suppression laws [notably, rapacious gerrymandering...], but DOJ has made a start.  The day may come when the US Congress is, once again, actually elected by a majority of voters.

[Read more:
Justice Depatment looks at NC voter id law
MeanMesa: American Democracy: Terms of Surrender
Pennsylvania voter id law struck down ]

Nestled in with the china and old boots in MeanMesa's attic hope chest, there are plenty additional targets for the DOJ.

It would seem reasonable for federal law enforcement interests to begin work on the now codified, Old Testament style, mandatory discrimination laws against gays and minorities being passed by the biblical red state governments. 

It's also probably time that the FBI "revisit" its internal investigation findings that every single one of the 150 shootings since 1993 that have been "reviewed" were totally "justified."  This is going to be the case with the slaughter of the Tsarnaev acquaintance during his interview in Florida, the deportation of all witnesses and the blanket sequestration of both the internal report and the autopsy findings concerning the body.

MeanMesa would be heartened by an energetic probe into the existing mountain of truly skanky, paid off Pentagon procurement.

There's always the possibility that Congressional "profits" from insider trading scams might benefit from a little "sun light."

Nonetheless, what we see today is a promising beginning.