One imagines U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr stomping across America like Tevye strolls through Anatevka. Only Barr is not extolling the virtue of cherished democratic traditions like free speech and assembly.
Sedition, sedition! Sedition!
Sedition, sedition! Sedition!
As Digby recounted Wednesday, Barr has taken his plans for restoration of the monarchy up a notch. He told federal prosecutors in a phone call last week to consider filing sedition charges against protesters (New York Times):
The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who described Mr. Barr’s comments on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Retribution, retribution! Etc.
First they come for the protesters. Then they come for the mayors:
The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions. Late Wednesday, a department spokesman said that Mr. Barr did not direct the civil rights division to explore this idea.
Remember “The government closest to the people serves the people best,” Bill? Nah! Didn’t think so.
The directives are in keeping with Mr. Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Ms. Durkan, a Democrat, Mr. Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Trump has repeatedly attacked.
This country is full of the king’s enemies, enemies everywhere. Everywhere!
Naturally, firm measures are necessary to keep the unwashed rabble in line. Like, like live ammunition and heat rays!
Hours before law enforcement forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in early June amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd, federal officials began to stockpile ammunition and seek devices that could emit deafening sounds and make anyone within range feel like their skin is on fire, according to an Army National Guard major who was there.
D.C. National Guard Maj. Adam D. DeMarco told lawmakers that defense officials were searching for crowd control technology deemed too unpredictable to use in war zones [citation added] and had authorized the transfer of about 7,000 rounds of ammunition to the D.C. Armory as protests against police use of force and racial injustice roiled Washington.
Heat rays and 7,000 rounds of ammunition.
Less-lethal weapons expert, Dr. Jürgen Altmann, issued cautions about the Active Denial System and other such weapons in a 2008 report. The heat ray may not be as harmless as advertised (emphasis mine):
“As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening – due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection – and require intensive care in a specialized unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death.“
One airman received second-degree burns in testing at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.
The New York Times account continues:
His supporters say Mr. Barr’s approach is necessary to preserve order at a moment that threatens to spiral into violence and to tamp down unrest in cities where the local authorities will not.
More than 93 percent of the protests in the United States this summer were peaceful, according to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which monitors political upheaval worldwide. The report looked at 7,750 protests from May 26 through Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, tells the Times:
“If Barr was saying that if you have a sedition case, then bring it, that is fine,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “But if he is urging people to stretch to bring one, that is deeply dangerous.”
The most extreme form of the federal sedition law, which is rarely invoked, criminalizes conspiracies to overthrow the government of the United States — an extraordinary situation that does not seem to fit the circumstances of the protests and unrest in places like Portland, Ore., and elsewhere in response to police killings of Black men.
But extraordinary authorities and claims of them is where Trump and his vizier Barr have taken the executive branch. Imagine the opportunities a second Trump term would afford Barr for “virtually unchecked discretion” in swelling the carceral state’s already embarrassingly high prison population with a flood of political prisoners incarcerated for as much as 20 years for whatever offends the sensibilities of His Royal Highness.
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