Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Comey and Clinton - One More Point


I have not heard anyone else mention this, but Comey's announcement reminded me greatly of the John Roberts and the SCOTUS decision in NFIB v. Sebelius.  The (losing) minority opinion, written by Justice Scalia, read as if it had been written as the (winning) majority opinion.  The actual majority opinion upholding PPACA (Obamacare) was written by Roberts.  And the legal reasoning in it made no sense, not even to the other four justices on the winning side.  Many observers suggested Roberts had been pressured by the executive branch to switch his vote at the last minute and concocted his nonsensical argument to rationalize the decision.  I think this myself.

Similarly, Comey detailed at length all the evidence needed to convict Hillary Clinton...and then proceeded to give a nonsensical legal argument to rationalize his position.  With a thoroughly partisan press, and absence of serious opposition, and an ignorant and gullible public, almost any nonsensical rationalization will do.

Postcript 10 July: Hard to believe, but FEE has published a defense of Comey's refusal to prosecute Clinton, or perhaps more precisely, an attack on libertarians who see this as a travesty of justice.  The author, John Hasnas, is purportedly a professor of law and business at Georgetown University; he teaches ethics.  Hasnas manages to raise exactly zero legal points and n facts of the case; it's simply that the state is not to be trusted so isn't it wonderful that it failed to prosecute an unusually powerful and well-connected person.  That's it.  From his argument, I think we can safely conclude that we should not be studying law and ethics at Georgetown, at least not with him.

At least FEE also published a piece that cites at length the relevant law and compares with the evidence presented by Comey, and concludes Clinton was not prosecuted simply because she's powerful and well-connected.  The author, Sean J. Rosenthal, is a real attorney, which explains the difference.

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