Posts Tagged → intimidation
CNN directly intimidates jurors
In case there is one American reader out there who believes that CNN is actually a news outlet, and not a partisan political activist group, you might consider CNN’s attempt to intimidate jurors last week.
For the past few days, the jury on the fake and illegal Manafort trial have repeatedly asked questions of the judge that indicate they are not entirely persuaded by Mueller’s politically persecuting prosecutors. After all, the entire prosecution case resulted from an illegal search warrant about something completely unrelated to the fake Russia collusion thingy Mueller is supposed to be looking into.
Suddenly just two days ago in steps CNN with a demand to know the names and home addresses of the jurors.
Now why would CNN want or need to know the names and home addresses of the members of an active jury? What possible news value would that provide? Think hard.
None, there is no value, of course.
Except here: That information can be passed on to the world of violent leftwing mobs, where individual people could descend upon the jurors’ homes and scare them, harass them, intimidate them, threaten them and their children, and badger their employers, as has been done in recent years.
So that the scared jurors are coerced into making the “correct” decision and convict an innocent man who did nothing except be associated with a president CNN dislikes.
It is difficult to fathom how far American media have fallen, and when you thought it could not get any worse, well, CNN has now made it even worse. This is not the way America is designed to work. Nor the First Amendment. The press is not supposed to be in the pocket of just one political party. And the press sure as hell is not supposed to be using its First Amendment investigatory role to expose jurors to threats and harassment so they decide differently than they appear to be leaning at this point. That is outrageous. It is dangerous to our democracy.
No longer can CNN claim victimhood in its dispute with the president. CNN is acting like a mafia organization, engaging in jury threats and intimidation to get what it cannot otherwise get legitimately. If you ask me, CNN’s actions are criminal.
What is most irksome is that the liberals I talk to seem ho-hum about this. “It’s not my issue, and I don’t think it is a big deal” says an old-time liberal Democrat friend.
He thinks his ox is not getting gored, and he dislikes Trump, so he looks the other way and gives CNN a free pass here. He is being unreasonable, yes, but reason and logic do not seem to be in widespread use these days. Feelings dominate everything.
The danger in my liberal friend looking the other way on CNN’s jury tampering is the inevitable widespread instability that results from these extreme activities by news groups, rogue mayors, and their purposefully defanged police departments. One things leads to another. CNN does it today, and someone will eventually find a way to put that shoe on the other foot in some other fashion. There will be a pushback. No complaints then, liberal friends! You did not complain about CNN today, so you cannot complain when the shoe is on the other foot tomorrow.
The bigger takeaway for me is people are beating on each other with whatever thing is at hand, even things like the media and IRS which were never meant to be weaponized, or withholding police protection from political opponents so that streets thugs can attack them; this is a sign that we are at intensely each other’s throats.
Not good. This is not America.
Is it time to recall PA AG Kane?
In 2012, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane campaigned on being fresh, new, unconnected to party politics. She challenged the ultimate Republican insider, and crushed him by a good 15%. Kane became Pennsylvania’s first Democrat AG only because so many Republican voters defected from the GOP and voted for Kane.
Within six months into her four-year tenure, signs were evident that she was not this politically dispassionate, politically disconnected professional and fair-minded arbiter she represented herself to be.
Rather, it became clear that she was politically correct (dogmatically liberal) and willing to use the AG office to score partisan political points, going so far as to choose not to enforce or defend state laws with which she personally disagrees. That right there is pretty much the end of democratic government, when elected officials stop enforcing laws they personally disagree with. Democracy only works if everyone agrees that whatever the law is, it is, and it is the law of the land until it is changed.
Kane’s icing on the cake was to cold-stop an investigation of four Democrat elected officials in the Philadelphia area. Kane does not deny that the four had been caught on tape or video taking bribes. One of the officials can be heard saying “Well, happy birthday to [me]!” as he pockets a wad of illegal cash.
In what stinks of political favoritism, Kane simply made up a lame excuse and stopped the ongoing investigation of obvious official corruption.
When Kane was called out about it by the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper unused to criticizing Democrats, she showed up to a meeting with the paper’s board with her libel lawyer in tow. A subsequent show of legal force and more open threats of a lawsuit against her critics, by Kane, has only made things worse for her. But she is not backing down. Mind you, the Inquirer merely reported the facts; the paper did not ascribe motive or allege that Kane herself was part of the cash scandal. So it is hard to see what kind of libel suit this elected official thought she was going to actually win. Intimidation was her first and last approach, however, which tells you all you need to know about her very low quality as an elected official.
Additionally, Philadelphia City DA Seth Williams, a Democrat, has criticized Kane for ending the investigation. Seth and I were close friends while students at Penn State, and yes, he is an active Democrat, and he is also a straight shooter.
Now, Kane says she supports another newspaper’s open records effort to get the documents about the terminated investigation. Well, actually, after opposing it, Kane only now supports releasing “certain” documents; you know, the documents that support her position. The investigation’s documents that will cast her political activism in a bad light, well, they should remain sealed, she says.
Governor Tom Corbett may well be a one-term governor, which presently it appears is his sad destiny, if the polling data is even close to accurate. Well, folks, let’s make this Kathleen Kane a half-term AG. She is incompetent, she is politicizing Pennsylvania’s established laws, and she is using blunt force legal intimidation to blunt honest criticism of her official job performance. Let’s start a recall of AG Kane, and get someone in that office who is a plain vanilla enforcer of The Law, as that role is supposed to be.
In an ideal world, party affiliation should not matter in the AG office. I myself am partial to the potential AG candidacy of Ed Marsico, Dauphin County’s present District Attorney. Marsico is an honest guy, a hard working guy, and has shown few partisan inclinations in his day to day work of making Dauphin County a safe place to live and work. Marsico would be a big enough improvement over Kane to warrant a recall effort against her. Surely there are other professional-grade DAs out there, too, who also would qualify to fill out the remainder Kane’s term.
Let’s get that recall effort started and Pennsylvania’s law enforcement back on track.
UPDATE: How on earth could I forget? Kane is having some difficulty investigating the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, where cash gifts and other toxic ethics violations have occurred recently. Now….why would Kane have such a tough time bringing to bear her full weight on such obviously corrupt violations of Pennsylvania laws? Why, it would not perhaps happen to be the presence of KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB, right? The KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB are worth millions of dollars to Kathleen Kane, personally. Got it. Fox guarding the henhouse here. Good old fashioned corruption, at least on the face of it. Time to end this sick experiment, and send Mrs. Moneybags Kane home.