Tag: insurrection

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights

The January Sixers

January 6, prisoner, jail cell, pardon, insurrection

Among the reasons one might be glad Donald Trump won the presidency is the reprieve he has given to many who attended the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington, DC.

While it is true that some who were punished did engage in violence and riot,* many were peaceful but were imprisoned anyway, under horrific conditions. And even some who avoided imprisonment were treated atrociously.

Among the latter is former police officer Michael Daughtry, who recently told his story. A few of the details:

Invited by President Trump to go to the West Lawn to peacefully protest, Daughtry did so. There, “police officers removed the barricades and waved us onto the West Lawn.” The FBI later confiscated Daughtry’s video of this.

On January 16, he was charged with trespassing on the West Lawn.

Though he had been a police officer and had no criminal record, Daughtry was jailed for hours before being brought before a judge … “in handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains.…”

Even after he was released, his home was raided repeatedly.

He was forced to turn over passwords to email, social media, bank accounts and much other private information to federal agents, who threatened him with prison if he did not comply.

Daughtry was under house arrest “for almost two years for a crime that carries a maximum punishment of less than a year. I have not been allowed to plea in this case.”

More here.

Trump pardoned Daughtry for his non-​crime. Would a President Harris have done so?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Those who assaulted police officers or plotted to do violence on that day should not have been pardoned — even if deserving of mercy, commuted sentences, without wiping their record, would have sufficed.

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ballot access election law judiciary

Democratic Mountain High

Donald Trump, Colorado Supreme Court, election, insurrection

How to spark a civil war?

“A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot,” wrote David Knowles for Yahoo News. This will, of course, induce a “showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-​runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race.”

The idea — half plausible, I suppose — is that President Trump’s actions on January 6 spurred an insurrection attempt, therefore he is ineligible to run for any federal office.

But emphasize the half-​plausible, since, no matter how often Democrats repeat it, the rally-​turned-​mini-​riot-​turned-​incursion into the Capitol Building did not amount to anything like an insurrection. Capitol Hill interlopers on January 6 were neither prepared nor demonstrating a plan to overthrow the peaceful succession of power. 

They certainly didn’t try to take over the government.

Nor has Mr. Trump been convicted of any such thing.

But, as we all know, this is a controversial matter falling mostly on partisan lines (the Colorado State Supreme Court being made up entirely of Democratic appointees) … which makes interpretation of the third section of the 14th Amendment rather tricky.

The state-​by-​state lawsuits have been sponsored by progressive interest groups trying, desperately, to stop Donald Trump from pulling off a Grover Cleveland: returning to office after a fluke one-​term “pause.”

Yet, even if the Supreme Court balks at putting down this too-​clever-​by-​half-​plausible scheme, the best Democrats could hope for is preventing Trump from running in blue states with blue courts. Trump might still win despite not being on some state ballots. 

Or lose in an election obviously rigged because he is barred. 

A recipe for deep distrust, resentment and anger.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture insider corruption

Traditional Terrorism

Jamaal Bowman, Congress, antifa, false alarm, protest, insurrection,

It’s a mild form of terrorism … perpetrated by a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jamaal Bowman (D‑NY) pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol, apparently to postpone a vote on a measure that would have kept the federal government operational, as it lurches into another of its periodic debt ceiling crises.

He denies the accusation … even as Breitbart News reports that he “ripped down two signs warning a second floor door in the Cannon House Office Building was for emergency use only before pulling the fire alarm and running out through a different door on a different floor.” It’s all “on tape,” requiring no advanced dialectic to determine the truth. 

I hazard that no one believes Bowman’s denial, not even his many defenders — for no one is really that stupid, not even in the Imperial City.

The go-​to interpretive of the non-​left commentariat is to compare it to the January 6 protests and riots. 

When those 2020 entrants into the Capitol disrupted the Senate’s ratification of the Electoral College results, they were accused of affronts to democracy, the peaceful handoff of power, and of obstructing the normal operations of government. Rep. Bowman, by misusing a fire alarm, was doing pretty much the same thing. But he is on the side of Big Government and the Democratic insider elite, so he’s probably not in as much jeopardy as those “losers” who found themselves stuck in prison.

But I notice another parallel: the juvenile stunt of pulling the fire alarm is a classic tactic of leftist protesters. Leftwing saboteurs of free speech have pulled many a similar alarm, if usually only to scuttle campus speaking events by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Cathy Young, et al. The saboteurs almost always get away with it. 

Bowman probably thought he would, too.

It’s tradition!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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