Roy Cohn was Joe McCarthy’s consigliere, a mob lawyer, a brass knuckled brawler, and overt hatemonger. Fred Trump may have pounded the compassion out of the young Don, but it was Cohn who taught him to kill. Roy Cohn's loyalty was to Trump and only Trump.
William Barr is a different matter; a legal and political sophisticate who earned his partisan bonafides shielding Bush the First from the stench of the Iran contra cabal. His loyalty is to The Party for which Trump is nothing more than a valuable tool.
Barr did not write an unsolicited, 19 page, single-spaced legal memorandum to audition for an illiterate, self-absorbed man who doesn’t read in the blind hope that it would attract his attention.
He wrote it for The Heritage Foundation (and it''s adjunct, The Federalist Society.)
His purpose was to introduce the novel legal argument that a president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice sans an underlying crime. That memo will be used as a weapon to protect, extend, and consolidate the right’s increasing stranglehold on power.
The Heritage Foundation is a neoconservative think tank and the intellectual arm of the far right. It first emerged in the 1970’s as the brain child of Joseph Coors, of Colorado beer fame, in reaction to the civil rights advances of The Warren Court (1953-1969), that began with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
The Foundation gained momentum during the Reagan and both Bush administrations and is now in full ascendancy. Its membership are comprised of free market, anti-regulation capitalists, foreign interventionists, (they strongly supported Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), Catholics and Christian religious zealots, pro-gun advocates and, of course a disproportionate number of white males.
These forces helped engineer the Supreme Court appointments of all five conservative Republican Supreme Court justices, (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as well as the deceased Scalia) with the anti-choice Catholic, Amy Coney Barrett, next in line.
Trump is merely an incidental beneficiary of The Foundation's muscle, useful as a front man for his corruptibility and Svengali sway over his base. The same efforts would be made if the president was Pence, Huckabee, Gingrich, or any other champion of right-wing ideology.
Their current henchman and policy executioner is not Donald Trump. It is Mitch McConnell.
Trump knew no one of political consequence when he descended on D.C. The Foundation filled the void with party apparatchiks. They are responsible for the 97 Federal judicial appointments made to date in the Trump regime now being rammed through by McConnell. A reported 66 foundation employees and alumni have received positions in the administration. They also recommended and secured cabinet appointments for Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, and Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton – and William Barr.
The Foundation will live long beyond Trump. It's impact will be with us for generations to come. It behooves US all to know them well.
He wrote it for The Heritage Foundation (and it''s adjunct, The Federalist Society.)
His purpose was to introduce the novel legal argument that a president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice sans an underlying crime. That memo will be used as a weapon to protect, extend, and consolidate the right’s increasing stranglehold on power.
The Heritage Foundation is a neoconservative think tank and the intellectual arm of the far right. It first emerged in the 1970’s as the brain child of Joseph Coors, of Colorado beer fame, in reaction to the civil rights advances of The Warren Court (1953-1969), that began with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
The Foundation gained momentum during the Reagan and both Bush administrations and is now in full ascendancy. Its membership are comprised of free market, anti-regulation capitalists, foreign interventionists, (they strongly supported Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), Catholics and Christian religious zealots, pro-gun advocates and, of course a disproportionate number of white males.
These forces helped engineer the Supreme Court appointments of all five conservative Republican Supreme Court justices, (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as well as the deceased Scalia) with the anti-choice Catholic, Amy Coney Barrett, next in line.
Trump is merely an incidental beneficiary of The Foundation's muscle, useful as a front man for his corruptibility and Svengali sway over his base. The same efforts would be made if the president was Pence, Huckabee, Gingrich, or any other champion of right-wing ideology.
Their current henchman and policy executioner is not Donald Trump. It is Mitch McConnell.
Trump knew no one of political consequence when he descended on D.C. The Foundation filled the void with party apparatchiks. They are responsible for the 97 Federal judicial appointments made to date in the Trump regime now being rammed through by McConnell. A reported 66 foundation employees and alumni have received positions in the administration. They also recommended and secured cabinet appointments for Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Rick Perry, and Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton – and William Barr.
The Foundation will live long beyond Trump. It's impact will be with us for generations to come. It behooves US all to know them well.
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