Who Asked You?

The thing that is odd about Mueller's statement is that when he says, "If we had had confidence that the president had clearly not committed a crime we would have said so," he is not only answering a question that no one has asked, he is answering a different question. 

In the first place, no one cares if you 'have confidence' that someone didn't commit a crime. You either think someone committed a crime and press charges, or you don't. Having suspicions or lacking confidence in someone's innocence is not something that lawyers get to talk about. Representatives of the state get to accuse or not accuse, they don't get to assign innocence ratings on a scale from 1 to 10. No one asked what you think of him as a person. They asked if he committed a crime. If you don't have the evidence to say 'yes' then you say nothing.

Mueller also makes it sound like there is some question about the president's actions. But what the president did is not really in question. We know what he did, he tried to have Mueller fired. It is what constitutes the crime of obstruction of justice that is in question. The president's actions are not in question, the law is in question. So Trump tried to have Mueller fired as he did have Comey fired. That is one of the bases of the obstruction charges. Note that the actions aren't really in question, it is the law. The law in question is so amorphous and vague that it could be made to apply to anything. 

It is an inquisition instead of an investigation. In an investigation you look for who committed the crime. In an inquisition you look for crimes the target committed. In one you start with the crime, in the other you start with the target. 

And so the liberties of us all are endangered. Remember this, if Trump with all his vast resources--personal and those of the Presidency--can be put in peril for his liberty, what chance has an ordinary citizen when he finds himself the target of Federal Prosecutors. We get so caught up and become willing to continence all these perversions of the common law to enable our brave prosecutors to vanquish the malefactor of the day that we give the prosecutors tools that will remain in their hands long after the present monster is slain or departed. 

And who do you think those tools, once fashioned and delivered up, will next be used on?

One thing that strikes me as strange about the Biden touching scandal is that the incidents all took place in public. These inappropriate touchings were all out there for everyone to see. There is not even for the most part a he said she said, it is a plain we saw.

Now at the very least this means that something the public saw and let pass without comment at the time is now considered scandalous.

The retroactive application of new standards to old behavior is problematic for a number of reasons.

Cultures change over time. Standards evolve. The standard for what is considered appropriate touching are cultural standards. We would have no trouble with the notion that the boundaries of personal space, the rules about where you can place your hands on another, the degree of deference owed to women and what is considered appropriate affection can differ from one country to another. Different countries, different cultures. What is normal in Italy, say, may be considered an assault in Norway. The same may be said of different parts of the same country. What my be considered appropriate in the North may not be in the South and so on.

The past is like a different country. Just as it can be unfair to apply the standards of one country to another, it can be unfair to apply the standards of one time to another.