Monday, July 27, 2015

The Authority Writes on The Doe(s)

Esenberg holds forth.

In the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision on the John Doe investigation, SpeciaL Prosecutor Fran Schmitz issued a strident statement criticizing the Court's decision. Losing an important case is always disappointing and a lawyer is certainly free to publicly differ with the outcome. But Schmitz' statement is revealing.

He says the Court's ruling "defies common sense" because now someone who contributes $ 25 to a candidate will have his or her name disclosed while someone who gives $ 100,000 to a group who closely coordinates with a candidate will not. That may be so and it may not be desirable, but it is a function of Wisconsin's outdated campaign finance law and not some distortion of that law by the court
....

Yes.  Legislatures, at all levels, write unclear or half-finished laws so that regulators can fill in the blanks damn near any way they want.  To a legislator, that's a feature, not a bug, by the way.

And--whether Schmitz was the brains behind this, or whether he was led down a garden-path by the clearly malevolent D.A. Chisholm (also featured in the below post),-- he was dead wrong on his interpretation of the law.

But that's not the part which inspires revulsion over the matter.

This is:

...Schmitz objects to the Court's characterization of the details of the raids. It doesn't matter. Let's step back and consider what happened here. At the instigation of the Democratic prosecutor of Milwaukee County, a five year long investigation into one side of the political spectrum was conducted. In it's initial iteration, it found almost nothing that it set out to find. That Democratic District Attorney doubled down and launched a new probe. In aid of this latter investigation, prosecutors blanketed Wisconsin's conservative infrastructure with astonishingly broad subpoenas and launched pre-dawn raids on the homes of certain activists. They told the targets that they could tell no one what was being done to them.

There is no dispute about any of that and, quite frankly, other details about the raids don't matter. If true, they merely aggravate the offense
. Treating political activists like drug traffickers is highly unusual and sends a clear message to others. Get involved in politics and you may be treated like a criminal.
...

Let's take this a step further.  "Justice" Kennedy has invited the Obozo Administration to prosecute those who object to queer "marriage" as "Haters."  "Hate speech" is a prosecutable offense in this country, you know.  While AG Lynch may not have the time or the resources to pursue "haters," the gate is wide open for similar raids on conscientious objectors.

Don't believe that?  Then watch the DOJ and California's AG prosecute the makers of the "Chop Shop" tapes.

This is the stuff about which Codevilla wrote, as mentioned below.

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