My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
The curious case of Laurence Tribe.
Let’s face it, nobody likes lawyers. We all have our favourite jokes about them; my personal favourite being do you know what the difference is between a mosquito and a lawyer? One is a blood-sucking parasite and the other is an insect. Har, har but of course there’s an element of truth there. However, a good one can be a gladiator for you, and that’s whether you’re guilty or innocent, and of course we’re all innocent anyway.
You spend the best part of four decades teaching law at Harvard to the best and brightest. It’s all roughly modelled on English common law but the real bedrock of American law is the constitution. Everything else is mere skirmishes over that tectonic plate. Battles are won or lost on it but if we ever lose that plate, we’re all truly lost.
We have a president who’s actually done nothing much and if you look over the wreckage of two administrations, it’s all carnage. The foreign policy is a bloody disaster with the only face saver being Kerry taking an occasional one up the butt from Putin. Domestically, well, ask the people of what used to be the great city of Detroit how they’re doing. Vast swathes of what can only termed Amerikanistan are in ruins. That’s the little bit between media intensive Washington DC and Los Angeles. Quite a few people live there. Seriously, they do.
The great blunderer has decided his legacy is to be remembered as the saviour of the planet. The problem of course is that most people with two brain cells to rub together, never mind Congress, realise the planet doesn’t need any saving but thank you very much anyway.
Undeterred, he’s determined to save it even if that means circumventing Congress and utilising an obscenely outrageous extension of the clean air act to in effect de-industrialise America. It is a president indirectly trying to rule by diktat using a federal agency. The EPA is already a sullied brand and in the coming years, some scores will be settled. It comes with all the sins of a compromised organisation – lies, fraud, FOI evasion and politics trumping any appurtenance of science. Nobody has any illusions when dealing with that dog.
All that stuff that couldn’t be crammed down the throat of either Congress or the electorate slowly starts to appear piecemeal as excruciating bits of regulations coming out of an innocuous federal body. There is nothing more dangerous than a placeholder president who’s achieved nothing much coming to the end of a second term. He doesn’t have to live with any feel-good legislation he leaves behind him.
Someone, somewhere has to make a stand, so you become the lead counsel for Peabody Coal, the biggest coal company in America. Eeek, you’ve just dropped off so many invitation lists. It’s got to be for something. What’s that about?
It’s all about defending the constitution and that thing called the Office of the President of the United States.
It’s not for climate scepticism, though I’m sure he’ll be adopted by that faction. It’s not about thwarting the Democratic party’s electoral ambitions. Go for it Hilary and God help America but I feel the timing has not been good for you. A little bit of research shows his politics would be left of centre. He even had a research assistant called Barack whom he’s always been careful to praise without going over the top.
Spotting right from wrong when it’s in your face is easy. It’s somebody hurting or killing someone else for no moral or legally defensible reason. What’s really difficult is picking out that point on the sliding scale from where the violence is being done for some sort of moral, legal or some obviously justifiable reason on its way to just being simply indefensible cruelty on any of those fronts, and while those reasons may overlap, none of them are the same thing.
Laurence Tribe has simply decided enough is enough. Because of that, the mob are coming after him, his reputation, his body of work and anything he ever was. His life work. They’ll go to great efforts to trash the lot, and probably will. He knew all of that up front, and yet made a decision to stand anyway. A good and honourable man taking a bullet for the constitution is where we’ve been dragged down to. It’s called integrity.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the state of what’s called the debate.
©Pointman
Pointman's 
The tragedy of Obama: never have we had a leader so skilled in gaining power, yet so unskilled in using it. He has become the most dangerous man in America through his efforts to “save” it. Tribe is a decent man acting on his conscience, and deserves plaudits not persecution.
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“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
—HL Mencken Baltimore Sun (26 July 1920)
Seems that the great and glorious day has well and truly arrived.
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“He has become the most dangerous man in America through his efforts to “save” it.”
But don’t you see, he had to destroy the nation in order to save it.
Ummm… Where did I hear something like that before…
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The only good chance is that the green blob is easily distracted. Furious they may be, but they have to be furious with every deviation from “political correctness”, and with Obama so low in the public opinion polls there are going to be quite a number of objections to him as emperor. We can only hope that something blows up soon and distracts the mob.
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“Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
HL Mencken In Defense of Women (1918)
The true genius of climate activism and much of the remainder of the obsessions of the political Left is that it provides much opportunity in the way of measurable activity and little in the way of measurable achievement. Whenever the spurious targets are not met then that only is seen as justification for more insane and pointless and vastly expensive programs. (Our just punishment for failing to do our ecological duty.) Meanwhile the relevant facts and science are dismissed and/or suppressed, in the greater good. By which, of course, is meant the enrichment of the few at the expense and misery of the many.
Those who stand against these imbecilities and criminalities should be fully aware of the cost to themselves—”No good deed go unpunished”, but their valour is in risking themselves for the benefit of mankind as a whole. In this they are entitled to our admiration and support, such as we have it to offer.
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Let’s hope that Tribe keeps his shit together. We have seen a few men of integrity get ground down and out by the lords of darkness.
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Victory as WV School Board allows students to debate global warming.
http://www.cfact.org/2015/04/09/victory-as-wv-school-board-allows-students-to-debate-global-warming/
The climate is changing …
Pointman
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Maybe Tribe will be an example to a few others who are also tired of the constant deceit. Sometimes one man of courage makes a difference.
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Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Agreed.
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Great points. Similarly, RealClearDefense notes: “What the Lord of the Rings teaches about strategy.” “J.R.R.Tolkein’s Teachings on Culminating Points” by James Holmes, Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College.
“the chief takeaway from Tolkien has always been: despair not. Sound moral counsel. . . .” He then cited a web comic suggesting:
“Sauron, the archenemy of all that’s good and noble, flouted what Carl von Clausewitz calls the highest and simplest law of strategy. To wit: make yourself strong in general, but especially at the decisive place on the map at the decisive time.
That place is where battles are lost and won. And striking “blow after blow” against the center of an enemy’s strength—pounding away repeatedly until he says uncle or collapses—represents the key to victory.
That was doubly true during the battle for Middle Earth. The alliance of elves, dwarves and men arrayed against Mordor had no incentive to parley. Why would they? The Dark Lord offered nothing except slavery and death. If there’s zero chance your enemy will capitulate, you’d better crush his forces, put your boot on his neck and impose what terms you will. Otherwise you may find yourself in a quagmire—or even suffer defeat.” . . .
Sauron “botched the second in epic fashion. As the graphic shows, he scattered army detachments hither and yon on various missions rather than mass his horde to strike a fatal blow against the Western allies. By fragmenting his army, he granted the West a fighting chance in each engagement.” . . .
“By putting the West on “death ground”—Sun Tzu’s phrase for putting someone in a life-or-death position—the Dark Lord guaranteed that the allies would fight to the finish. They had no other option. His forces’ assault on the fortress at Helm’s Deep—an attempted genocide—built an alliance rather than demolishing one.”
In context, the EPA has has “offered [Peabody Coal and Prof. Tribe] nothing except slavery and death – with zero chance [it] will capitulate” placing them on “death ground” . .the “life-or-death position”. Therefore they joined forces in the current existential battle against the EPA, applying their strongest weapon – the Constitution.
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After the slaughter in Waco, TX, Janet Reno said on national TV that we had to (machine gun, gas and incinerate some two dozen children) because they were being abused. The difference is that the liberal media agreed that they had it coming. So…tell me again why we shouldn’t compare them to NAZIs?
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I loved the line about Kerry.
And agree completely with your evaluation of the President. I do have a question – what does it say when the man who is telling the nation that climate change is our greatest threat and that the oceans are rising dangerously has just purchased an ocen front home in Hawaii? Is he that stupid or that much of a hypocrite?
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Tribe’s side just won–SCOTUS has just ruled against the EPA in the mercury emissions case.
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