UPDATED: Judge Alberto Gonzales For Trump Vs. Judge Gonzalo Curiel For La Raza

Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, Justice, Law

Judge Gonzalo Curiel is a picture of judicial impropriety, claims Alberto R. Gonzales, “White House counsel and U.S. attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, dean and Doyle Rogers Distinguished Professor of law at Belmont University College of Law in Nashville, Tenn.”

Yet not one anti-Trump, indignant journo—from Megyn Kelly (Fox News) to Chris Matthews to Katy Tur to Joe Scarborough to Chris Hayes (MSNBC) to Don Lemon to Erin Burnett (CNN) to Trump’s proliferating, less-than-competent female surrogates, to the domesticated Republicanscondemning the candidate—has mentioned Gonzales’ name or the incriminating facts he divulged about Justice Curiel’s unfitness to sit in judgment of Donald Trump.

Gonzales wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post titled “Trump has a right to ask if Judge Gonzalo Curiel is fair”:

“… An independent judiciary is extremely important. But that value is not the only one in play here. Equally important, if not more important from my perspective as a former judge and U.S. attorney general, is a litigant’s right to a fair trial. The protection of that right is a primary reason why our Constitution provides for an independent judiciary. If judges and the trials over which they preside are not perceived as being impartial, the public will quickly lose confidence in the rule of law upon which our nation is based. For this reason, ethics codes for judges — including the federal code of conduct governing Curiel — require not only that judges actually be impartial, but that they avoid even the “appearance of impropriety.” That appearance typically is measured from the standpoint of a reasonable litigant. …”

“… Certainly, Curiel’s Mexican heritage alone would not be enough to raise a question of bias (for all we know, the judge supports Trump’s pledge to better secure our borders and enforce the rule of law). As someone whose own ancestors came to the United States from Mexico, I know ethnicity alone cannot pose a conflict of interest.”

“But there may be other factors to consider in determining whether Trump’s concerns about getting an impartial trial are reasonable. Curiel is, reportedly, a member of a group called La Raza Lawyers of San Diego. Trump’s aides, meanwhile, have indicated that they believe Curiel is a member of the National Council of La Raza, a vocal advocacy organization that has vigorously condemned Trump and his views on immigration. The two groups are unaffiliated, and Curiel is not a member of NCLR. But Trump may be concerned that the lawyers’ association or its members represent or support the other advocacy organization. Coupled with that question is the fact that in 2014, when he certified the class-action lawsuit against Trump, Curiel appointed the Robbins Geller law firm to represent plaintiffs. Robbins Geller has paid $675,000 in speaking fees since 2009 to Trump’s likely opponent, Hillary Clinton, and to her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Curiel appointed the firm in the case before Trump entered the presidential race, but again, it might not be unreasonable for a defendant in Trump’s position to wonder who Curiel favors in the presidential election. These circumstances, while not necessarily conclusive, at least raise a legitimate question to be considered. Regardless of the way Trump has gone about raising his concerns over whether he’s getting a fair trial, none of us should dismiss those concerns out of hand without carefully examining how a defendant in his position might perceive them — and we certainly should not dismiss them for partisan political reasons. … .”

MORE: “Trump has a right to ask if Judge Gonzalo Curiel is fair.”

UPDATED (4/6/018): Swollen Heads At National Review Exposed

America, Elections, Family, Labor, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Race, Republicans, Welfare

National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson “reached peak leftism” when he declared his sympathies were “more with John Brown than John Calhoun,” in an article titled “We Have Officially Reached Peak Leftism” (June 24, 2015). In 1856, Brown’s free-soil activists snatched five pro-slavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas and split the captives’ skulls with broadswords, in an act of biblical retribution gone mad.

So it’s not that surprising that Williamson’s exquisite moral compass has led him to wish death upon white, working-class America. According to Breitbart.com, Williamson wrote this:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

This is not passionate writing; it’s plain hateful. Whatever merit there is in the indictment of working-class Americans—a case made well by political scientist Charles Murray, in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”—this ain’t it. Williamson writes in arrogance and contempt.

But, as further divulged by Breitbart, another National Review staff writer feels as Williamson does. He is David French (the object of my new column, “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel”). The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol’s candidate to run an independent presidential campaign is down with Williamson:

[French] described Williamson’s piece as “excellent” and said that Williamson’s words were “fundamentally true and important to say.”

French went on to dismiss the struggles white working class Americans endure.

“Citizens of the world’s most prosperous nation, they face challenges — of course — but no true calamities,” French wrote.

While French suggests that the decline of America’s middle class and manufacturing power is no true calamity, others could argue that the greater a nation or culture, the more sorrowful it is to witness its decline — much the same way that history would mourn the destruction of the Palace of Versailles more than the totaling of Justin Bieber’s car.

French insists that the devastation of the working-class’ livelihoods is unrelated to failed federal policies such as mass immigration …

I hate the, “Would he be saying this if … ” game. But I’ll indulge this once. It’s apposite. Would Williamson and French ever lay into the black underclass with the same degree of venom?


MORE AT “Bill Kristol’s Candidate: It’s ‘Important to Say’ White Working Class Communities ‘Deserve to Die.’”

RELATED: “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel.”

UPDATED (4/6/018): Kevin D. Williamson, so blood thirsty.

Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Republicans, UN

“Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel” is the current column, now on The Unz Review. An excerpt:

Prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol shared his election-year hallucinations with the nation. From the ashes of the Republican primaries would rise a man to stand for president against victor Donald J. Trump, a Sisyphean task that has been attempted and failed by 17 other worthies.

This individual is David French, an attorney, a decorated Iraq War veteran, and writer for the decidedly “Against Trump” National Review. Curiously, Kristol’s independent candidate is a “devout social conservative,” an evangelical who questions the merits of “de-stigmatizing” homosexuality, rejects the progressive premise upon which the transgender, potty wars are being waged, and would keep women out of combat.

Why, then, would a “relatively secular faction within the Republican Party,” the neoconservatives, make common cause with the Party’s fundamentalist wing? Jeet Heer, senior editor at the New Republic, asks this question—a riddle familiar to students and scholars of American conservatism.

The alliance, or, rather, the master-servant relationship between neoconservatives and the Religious Right is an old one. Political evangelists have long since been brought to heel by the Washington-based neoconservatives. “Most on the Religious Right have hardly resisted such cooptation, having perhaps nowhere to go financially, politically or professionally,” wrote Dr. Paul Gottfried in The Conservative Movement, his 1993 prophetic, forensic examination of the roots of the conservative crack-up.

French is vested in an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy. His impressive military credentials, in his role as a tool of democratic internationalism, are meant to provide a stark contrast to Trump’s nativism. At least as Kristol sees it.

French is no American Firster in the way Donald Trump is. For a man can don the uniform and fight Caesar’s wars, but that doesn’t necessarily make him someone who puts his country first—unless one conflates the interests and well-being of ordinary Americans with wars of choice plotted by the New York-Washington axis of power. This error is not one Mr. Trump commits. While the presumptive Republican Party’s nominee clearly has great affection for America’s veterans, he doesn’t love all the wars they’ve been ordered to fight. …

… Read the rest. “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel” is now on The Unz Review.

Tweet Round Up (Mid-May-June): ‘1237,’ Illiberal Schools, Islam, Debt & Donald, Immigration, MegaloMegyn

Britain, Debt, Donald Trump, Education, Foreign Policy, History, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Media, Neoconservatism, Private Property, Race, Republicans

TRUMP in Sacramento:


1237:


John Brown & neocons:


Hijabs in military academy:


Kunta Kerwick on Roots:


Cupcakes:


Brexit:


Libertarians for Hiroshima:


TRUMP rally reality:


Not Bon Jovi but Roger Daltrey:


Megyn’s getting scarier:


Slow media still guessing:


Media & street Thugs blame Trump:


Pinko Republicans go for Trump:


Refugees:


Pocahontas:


Libertarian Party:


They women burn Bernie


DEBT


Geert Wilders:


Invade Then Invite (as Steve Sailer put it)


Forced Integration:

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