Lowering the Barr - Dowd

[question everything]

(snip)

Barr came into the job, Crawford said, with a good reputation on the right and the left and now he stands “accused of protecting the president, enabling the president, lying to Congress.” In Homer’s epic poems, reputation is more exalted than life itself. But in Donald Trump’s epic reign as the hotheaded, ammonia-haired, serpent-tongued destroyer of worlds, political survival is paramount, no matter the venality involved or the cost to your reputation.

Barr responded to Crawford with fatalism, saying “everyone dies” and he doesn’t believe in “the Homeric idea” that immortality comes by “having odes sung about you over the centuries, you know?” It’s a good thing, too, because no one will be singing odes about this general being lionhearted in the rosy-fingered dawn.

(snip)

Mueller was trying to let himself off the hook by insisting that he couldn’t reach a conclusion on the president’s obstruction because he was bound by a Department of Justice opinion stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Plus, he layered on some extra “principles of fairness.” But talking to Crawford, Barr took the knife he had already stuck in his old friend and twisted it, using St. Mueller’s prestige against him. He said Mueller, in fact, was not barred from reaching a conclusion, and this is why a “surprised” Barr and his former deputy, Rod Rosenstein, had to step in and reach a conclusion on obstruction, one ending up favoring Trump.

After indicating that Mueller was derelict and misguided, Barr went ahead and belittled him and his dream team as inept. Dismissively noting he and Rosenstein did not agree with a lot of the legal analysis in the Mueller report, Barr said he applied what he considered to be “the right law,” though he confusingly said he didn’t rely on that when pronouncing Mueller’s evidence “deficient” on the 11 instances of potential obstruction laid out in the report.

When Barr moved on to his investigation of the investigators who worked on the case of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, he really bared his claws. About the F.B.I. team that did the investigating, Barr backed up all of Trump’s deep-state rants, saying: “Republics have fallen because of Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state.” He added, ominously, “Things are just not jiving.”

More..

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/sunday/dowd-robert-mueller-william-barr.html

[procon]

1. It could be just as easy to apply Barr's prediction

to his own well documented writings to elevate the office of president to that of a king with himself as the self appointed Praetorian Guard to Trump's fantasy of becoming a full scale dictator.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Putin now has a direct line into American intelligence services.

Putin now has a direct line into American intelligence services.

First goal: get the names of the moles in his own gov't.

Now he can get the intell wholesale instead of piecemeal purchases from Jared.

Putting money into Trump was the best investment Vlad ever made.

[StevieM]

7. The second line in the body of your post has me thinking about Valerie Plame again.

How many American sources abroad were exposed after Ms. Plame was outed?

[dem4decades]

3. Did Dowd finish her piece by getting a few jabs at Hillary?

Maureen can't go away fast enough for me.

[Skittles]

4. I find Maureen to be insufferable

"lionhearted in the rosy-fingered dawn"

good lawd, cribbing on Homer

[hlthe2b]

5. Yes.. I think some of the most pretentious have an app at their ready to throw in

as needed. The how to look "smart" by plagiarizing all the great historians and philosophers you never read, but think you should have, app.

[BlueMTexpat]

6. +1000! eom