Timothy Birdnow

I caught the Sekulo show on Salem News yesterday and one of Jay's kis was hosting (Jordan, I think, but I may be wrong). Anyway he was arguing against pursuing the Biden pardons. I was astonished because, while he may well be right, he fails to grasp the most basic fundamentals of why we should pursue this.

Sekulo argued entirely from a legal perspective and based it entirely on the lack of qualifiers in the Conwstitution. He said "the constitution doesn't limit the powers of the President to pardon" and that may well be true, but EVERY power in the Constitution has been limited after the courts got involved to clarify them.

I would have liked to ask Mr. Sekulo about many other things that are quite plain on the face of them in the Constition that are routinely ignored. For example, the Tenth Amendment states quite plainly that all powers NOT EXPRESSLY GRANTEED to the Federal government devolve to the "states and the People". In other words there has to be a law restricting the states or the People and that must comport with the enumerated powers. Yet the Feds overstep this all the time and nobody ever complains. In fact the right of Judicial review itself is not expressly granted in the Constitution yet we allowed the Supreme Court to usurp this power in Marbury V. Madison. There are multiople other examples; the Department of Education completely usurps the state's right to control education within their boundaries. Another example was the deal made by Thomas Jefferson to purchase the Louisiana territory. At the time many accused Jefferson of usurping power as that was not in the Constitution. Subsequent Presidents did likewise, from James "Mr. Constitution" Madison annexing the Republic of West Florida (against their will), the annexation of Texas and California, the Gadsden Purchase, and the purchase of Alaska, just to name a few. Nowhere does the Constituion authorize such expansion and by Presidential order.

Many states were cobbled up by Congrss without any sort of legal basis; they just did it. Virginia, once the larges and most populous state, was cut down to where it is today. It once stretched to the Mississippi and by their own reckoning even beyond.

And of course Lincoln had no legal right to force the South to stay in the Union. Nowhere is that power enumerated in the Constitution. Lincoln got around that by calling it an insurrection (sound familiar) but it was state governments that were seceding, not pocketts of civilians who grabbed conttrol of certain areas. Those states would never have joined the Union if it had no means of escape - like joining the Mafia, I suppose.

These days nobody makes a Tenth Amendment argument because if we actually started applying that amendment the whole system we've build would collapse.

So Sekulo called for following the Constitution when we haven't followed it for years.

I get it; I want it followed too. But we are in an asymmetric war and we will lose if we do not play by the rules they have set. They use the Constitution as a weapon.

And as I said there are restrictions placed on almostt everything by Congress and the Courts. Free speech? Congress set rules making some speech illegal. Right to bear arms? We have multiple restrictions on THAT one despite the clause being crystal clear. You can't own a bazooka, or a tank, or a mortar, for instance. You can't even own a machine gun. How is that 'shall not be enfringed'? Freedom of assembly is very often disregarded. The government says people can assemble, but only in certain places, many times. You can't assemble outside of a Supreme Court Justice's home. (You can't make anything remottely like a threat to one either, abrogating free speech. While that is reasonable it is not what the Constitution says.)

There has been no restrictions placed on the power of pardon because there was never a need for one before Biden. Even Obama, who made some terrible pardons, didn't pardon himself or Eric Holder or Hillary Clinton. Biden took it to a whole new level of corruption. Maybe it's time to take another look at the inviolate power.

Furthermore, what constitutes a pardon? Can a President pardon a person for a crime for which they have not yet been charged? That has been traditionally accepted, but should it be?

Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitutionsays:

"The president has the power to pardon any person who has committed a federal crime, except in cases of impeachment"

Note the word "committed"; to me that suggests the President cannot pardon someone pre-emptively because they have not been shown to have committed a crime. What, pray tell, can stop a President from pardoning someone in perpetuity? That would essentially be creating an Oprichnina, like Ivan the Terrible had, a nation within a nation that could not be held legally accountable. And there is no reason why a President couldn't pardon all of someone's offspring and kin, giving them an inherited pardon and thus allowing the family to do as they pleased.

At some point the Supreme Court will intervene in the pardon process; and I suspect they would do so if Trump were to pardon his own family or himself.

Many argue the President cannot pardon himself, but why not? If we make the power absolute, as current interpretation does, that means he has every right to do so.

English common law, from which our pardon powers are derived, has always limited the practice. It must not be pleadable in court. So pardoning, say, Hunter Biden, would be an illegal pardon based on English law as Hunter had not exhausted his legal remedy yet.

Of course we do thing differently than did the British but our law was based on British and the Founders certainly understood this when they wrote it into the Constituion. They just figured they didn't have to spell it out.

They made that mistake frequently.

At any rate I think there is probably a pretty good legal case to be made for overturning Biden's pardons, although saying it was done by autopen won't fly.

But Sekulo's argument completely falls apart when he stars admonishing us to "move on". Karl Rover was always preaching that to us and it was why we kept failing. The Left never moves on, they always keep it on a back burner when they don't get what they want and eventually they get it. Rove's theory was that people get bored easily. True enough. So he would simply concede an argument, which was astoundingly stupid; it made it appear our side was ashamed of itself and lying.

I would point out to Mr. Sekulo, too, that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. He admonishes us to drop it "because we have bigger fish to fry" but what bigger fish? Seems to me the abuse of power by many of the people Biden pardoned is as big a fish as you are likely to see. We need to stir the public, and keep this in their minds, even if we fail to overturn these pardons. The public will forget and the media knows this, which is why they won't discuss it. We need to make the media discuss it against their will. The only way to do that is by going after this.

Among other things Trump promised was transparency and justice. IF we fail to at least make a good-faith attempt at this we will show ourselvesas liars to the average citizen. They will conclude it's "business as usual" with new management, nothing more.

The Left has advanced so very far because, with control of the schools and with control of the media, they can attack at times and places of their own choosing. Trump has flipped the script on them, forcing them for the first time in my life to actually fight a defensive war. They are struggling to succeed because they have no experience doing this. But give them time, let them have breathing room, and they will lay a devil's snare for Trump and MAGA.

So we need to come at them from all fronts. Sekulo doesn't seem to get that; he'sstill in defensive mode. I suppose that was inevitable; the American Center for Law and Justice has a mission to respond to attacks by the Left. It is purely defensive in nature. That is good work and necessary,but now we need to be on the offensive. As Sun Tzu said, seize that which your enemy holds dear. It makes them make mistakes in anger and despair.

So if Trump can depardon these people the Left will go bonkers; it's as if he's erasing the last fouryears, years where they thought they were about to win and to win completely.

And it shows that nobody is above the law. This will stop others from the skullduggery these people committed, and it shows the American People that the Trump Administration is working for justice. As Pope Paul VI famously stated "if you want peace work for justice". We have not had justice for along time in America. There are two sets of rules, two sets of laws, and if you are in the Ruling Class you can get things like pardons when you break the law. This will show that in Trump's America, at least, that is not the case. That will win a lot of votes - and voters.

I love Sekulo but he's just wrong here; we need to have this fight.

I get it; the Left will use this against us some day. But they don't care about our moderation; remember how they just eliminated the filibuster when it suited them? We had discussed doing that when the GOP had control but didn't so they wouldn't do itwhen they were in power. But they took power and launched the nukes anyway. You cannot expect reasonableness from the Democrats.

This is a war Mr. Sekulo. There are going to be casualties. And the aggressor sets the rules of engagement.For the last 100 years the Left has been the aggessor.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 1709 words, total size 10 kb.