Massachusetts Democrat: the government arresting the political opposition is a step forward for the U.S.

by philg

I’ve been mostly in a news vacuum for the past couple of weeks (family trip to D.C. (grandma), Atlanta (aquarium, zoo, botanical garden, World of Coca Cola), Jupiter, Florida (beach, mini golf), and Asheville (Biltmore mansion)). I returned to my labors at the local flight school today and a Massachusetts Democrat related his elation regarding the F.B.I. search and seizure of Rudy Giuliani’s office and computer gear (see “F.B.I. Searches Giuliani’s Home and Office, Seizing Phones and Computers”).

Typically when we read about a government that arrests the political opposition we don’t see that as a positive step for a country, but this guy didn’t see any downside to an affiliate of the former president being prosecuted by the current one.

On the plus side, nobody can take away our big flags (from Chimney Rock State Park, North Carolina):

And another photo for scale:

Related:

25 thoughts on “Massachusetts Democrat: the government arresting the political opposition is a step forward for the U.S.”

  1. It does look like a page from Putin or Coza Nostra handbook: Giuliani has made his name fighting corruption: Michael Milken of Princeton stock scam, late Marc Rich and know high-paid international expert under influence Hunter Biden whose prosecution is not happening despite wide publicized dealing that smell of top level corruption. Now Big Guy takes out the investigator.

  2. He was not arrested I think. Search warrants were approved by a Federal judge and executed by the DOJ.

    • That what happened to Russia’s corruption fighter Alexei Navalny before he was arrested, put through a kangaroo trial and sent to high security prison after he took on Putin himself.

    • The underlying charge, failure to register, is not the sort of thing that should be criminal and if it is the DOJ should have better things to do that prosecute these sorts of cases. The application to a federal judge would have been made ex parte and as we know from the Carter Page scandal the ex parte information that supports the warrant can turn out to be false once tested. I think Phil’s general point, minus the rhetoric, is right, that this is an obvious political prosecution if one focuses on the law the DOJ is trying to enforce, how they are trying to enforce it, and whom they are enforcing it against.

    • Looks like a fishing expedition to get anything possible on Trump. There was a news item that Trump was (still is?) planning to re-start his rallies. May also be a payback, I think Giuliani referred Hunter Biden’s laptop to FBI? Not exactly sure I read something about it last year.

    • Americans are well advised to read Solzhenitsyn to learn the true nature of woke neo-Bolsheviks.

  4. Also: Roger Stone charged. Numerous Jan. 6 protesters, including entirely peaceful one, being held without bail. And Nick Fuentes has reportedly been put on the do-not-fly list.

  5. Obama always says if you liked voted for Trump you can keep voting for him after attending rehabilitation (in some states only).

    • Fran: We should be moving there in early August (school starts August 17). Our 7-year-old seems to suffer quite a bit from allergies and colds/flu here in MA so we’re hopeful that he will breathe more freely in Florida. We’ll give up the big yard and the woods in favor of more city-type stuff and public beaches. We won’t have the 66 governor’s orders (so far) to keep us safe from a virus, nor folks wearing masks while driving solo, nor more than a handful of people wearing masks outdoors. But at least when COVID-19 kills me, the kids won’t lose a big percentage of their inheritance to Massachusetts estate tax! (10-16%)

    • Wow! Congratulations, Phil! It’s the end of an era.

      I shall be very curious to hear how you take to South Florida, as I’ve been flirting with the idea myself for some time.

      Are you planning to continue teaching, I presume?

    • phik: It is the end of an era, but Massachusetts today bears little relation to the Massachusetts that I affirmatively chose to live in (back in 1983 when I moved back from Silicon Valley). I’ve already been through a few eras here!

      I’ll keep teaching via Zoom. I think MIT and Harvard may keep the Zoom thing going for quite a few years yet. The coronavirus seems to have roughly the same schedule as the academic year here in MA. Unless Nature runs out of variants, the middle of the academic year will always be a good time to stay in bunkers.

    • Congrats on the move Phil! Will you teach flying in Florida? An interesting idea for a post might be some of the pros and cons of moving to Florida and how you made the final decision then maybe an ongoing series on how it’s working out. Many of us are considering similar moves.

    • TS: I will probably eventually get a local job there. Abacoa/Jupiter is not particularly close to any flight schools. F45 is being expanded to 6000′ runway, but this is happening at an American, not a Chinese pace. (So far, about 6 years of environmental study on what would happen if 4300′ become 6000′; maybe some of the paperwork will be finished in 2021 and then it can get submitted to Biden’s FAA for spending approval.) PBI is actually the closest airport and it has three FBOs but I shudder to think at what it would cost to hangar a light plane there.

  7. I thought Republicans were the law and order party, the harsh criminal sentence party, the death penalty party, the big, more guns party, the support the police (but not the FBI because they have punished Republicans!) party, the Constitution party, the patriotic party, the personal accountability party. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

    Giuliani’s a Republican (philg’s team) so of course he can do no wrong, to hell with holding anyone on his team accountable for breaking the law.

    “Typically when we read about a government that arrests the political opposition we don’t see that as a positive step for a country…” — Typically U.S. Presidential administrations haven’t been criminal enterprises.

    • That’s similar to Putin’s rationale jailing Alexei Navalny. Just replace party names.

  8. Along the same general lines: “New Evidence That British Workplaces Are Losing Viewpoint Diversity“. It says “Younger and older people profoundly disagree on questions such as the role of the nuclear family and whether our nation’s history is something to be proud of.” No prize for guessing which generations are on the thumbs-down side of those questions. It’s the mouse utopia interpretation of history, all the way down! Western civilization died sometime within the last few decades and we’re now observing how the corpse disintegrates.

  9. Criticism from the supporters of the person who brought “Locker her up” to the main stream

    • ??? Was Rudy Giuliani too involved in feeding Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods to enemy troops for slow death by torture? If Giuliani is guilty what cab be said about Bidens?

    • I do remember a campaign slogan of “lock her up”, but did the Trumpenfuhrer ever act on this idea once in office, e.g., by sending the FBI or DOJ to investigate or prosecute Hillary?

      Personally, I recognize a difference between what is said by a private citizen (Trump the candidate) and what is done by a government. The former is actually evidence that a country is free. The latter, if what is done is an action against an opposing political group, may be evidence that a country is not free.

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