Today, I will be testifying on the over-criminalization of federal law before the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Committee on the Judiciary. The testimony (linked below) is part of a hearing titled “Criminalizing America: The Growth of Federal Offenses and Regulatory Overreach.”
The hearing is particularly meaningful for me because, exactly twenty-seven years ago, on May 7, 1998, I appeared in this very committee room before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the rapid criminalization of federal laws, particularly administrative crimes.
I testified in 1998 on the exponential growth of federal crimes in every aspect of American life. Regrettably, that over-criminalization has continued largely unabated with chilling implications for our society.
The hearing begins at 2 p.m. in 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. I have the honor of appearing with Brett Tolman, Founder of Tolman Group, Executive Director, and former Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Utah, and GianCarlo Canaparo, Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Here is my testimony: Turley.House.Overcriminalization.2025
The way that Dan Goldman whined and cried when you deigned to respond to his bad faith questions was a sight to see. He annoyed me so much that I had to write about it! https://buffoonoftheweek.com/2025/05/goldman-turley-biggs/
The Center for Integrity in News Reporting – an oxymoronic organization if ever one existed. Kinda like the Jumbo Shrimp Association or the Sweet Sorrow Society or a personal favorite: Random Order Roundtable!!
A 2009 Wall Street Journal article entitled:
You Commit Three Felonies a Day
Laws have become too vague and the concept of intent has disappeared.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842
says it all. 25 years later one can only imagine how many felonies the average person commits each day.
I completed an MBA Program shortly after medical school to navigate, as a physician, the business medical landscape. Building on my classical liberal arts Jesuit education, and having worked in the pharmaceutical industry for several years, I found the MBA curriculum easy except for one troubling facet: business ethics. I graduated summa cum laude, but pressed the professors on the fact that the MBA educational program (and business world) was bereft of any formal education in ethics, morality, doing the right thing. I wrote a paper for a course on business law and ethics, and shared it with a friend of mine, my former lawyer, now a circuit judge, one of my closest friends, an atheist, and argued that no amount of laws could ever guide a business organization on how to be moral or ethical. It was up to “choice” not “laws” in doing the right thing.
Our interactions with others and with ourselves are predicated on a well formed conscience, something that comes from our parents, our family upbringing, elders who took the time to take our / their lives seriously as role models. Medicine is a catastrophe because no matter how many laws Congress passes, the morally bankrupt person will always find ways to perform outside of the laws to their gain. This also applies to politicians, lawyers, judges, academics, parents and their offspring.
Prior to the 1960s, Americans conducted themselves with modesty, restraint, temperance, respect towards institutions and acknolwedged a greater good, a God, that existed, and showed humility, praise and thanksgiving in all circumstances. Abraham Lincoln never wavered in guiding Americans to turn to God Almighty in all circumstanes, just like the Founding Fathers. There wasn’t 100% participation in America with religion, but the majority followed this metric and hence provided stability to our society. Even if all members were not fervent believers in religion, they still subscribed to the precepts because they kept society together. They knew deviating from these would lead to chaos.
Those days are long gone, and we are left with a society that has been plunging into the darkness since the 1960s, only more rapidly recently because religion no longer guides our conscience, because parents have stopped being parents, but rather ideologies guide the Western world: conservative or liberal, traditionalist or progressive, left or right. it’s all a travesty.
The human body operates on a vastly different metric: efficiency based on evolutionary inheritance. Efficiency is made possible via molecular signaling within each cell and extracelluarly as well. It just takes one protein to be misfolded, be characterized by a polymorphism, have a missing or extra amino acid, and you get pathology. Sickle Cell Disease, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), Crohn’s Disease, and many other pathologies are caused by one single polymorphism. Whether one succumbs to COVID, influenze, Polio, HIV has nothing to do with the virus per se but rather one protein e.g. Toll-Like Receptors in the innate immune system.
We as humans with a functioning brain, with 2 sexes (male and female) who are capable of offspring, have largely been able to replicate our human experience and passed them along to our children, so that they too can have a wonderful life to enjoy. Life has never been a rose garden, nor do our human bodies do escape illnesses, injuries, accidents, near death experiences, and a struggle to recover. But it works just the same.
America could get back on the right track if it chose to do so, but instead we choose to divide and conquer, left vs right, hit the “panic porn” button like a rat in a skinner box just to be awarded a hard tasteless biscuit to get us to the next “hit” of dopmaine. We act like squirrels. While Professor Turley is trying to address an over criminalization of federal laws by visiting the House Judiciciary Comittee, to which he deserves credit, better if he like all Americans, made a hard and fearless moral inventory as the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step Program teaches. Look within and start there. Otherwise, if we fail to start with remedying our own sick souls, pointing the finger at others only furthers the deterioration of our society. Rock bottom is just around the corner, as the 2025 film Warfare reminds us. It can happen anywhere. It is already happening here in our nation.
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you
– St. Augustine’s Confessions
Thank you, Estovir, for your lovely and salient analysis of current American culture. The bible repeats a certain maxim in various forms that always proves true: “A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left” (Ecclesaistes 10:2), and you rightly note that the rapid decline of moral imperative in our society is due to the loss of God. We should further acknowledge that the cultural rot we are experiencing is due to the manic and profuse litigation in the “separation of church and state” since the 1960’s.
A comment on America’s march toward the social damage of secular atheism or leftist extremism: Whether they be bashfully agnostic or brazenly atheist, modern secularists (with a preponderance of them on the left) put forth a strong sense of being the only ones in the “right,” then acting on enmity rather than allowing shared cultural space. Sincere spirituality brings far more peace and change than virtuous-secular-ideology as evidenced in the dangerous anti-Christian bias so popularly espoused today; the obdurate use of “separation of church and state” has not been a means of polite coexistence, but a means of eradication, going so far as to create bizarre and illogical conundrums, like blaming Christianity for most wars & death, quite literally leaving genocidists like Stalin and Trotsky, Mao and Polpot, in utter obscurity, thus fomenting hate and grave physical harms like church shootings and bombings, and religious persecutions, all with the eager sanction of those on the left who don’t know history.
Over-criminalization of the citizen’s right to speak and act in objection to aberrant “pathologies” in everything from abortion to warning of the sexual mutilation of underage children in the bandwagon of “gender-changing-care” is the new tool in leftist political supremacy. In other words, criminalizing the free speech and fair warnings about REAL social harms, is an offshoot of their ever-expanding despotism. Despite the moral controls Christianity provides to society, many of these atheists say Christianity is only for the loopy follower who has no capacity for “critical thinking;” this is not only an extreme and dehumanizing bias without any remediation, it is a thoughtless participation in the madness of crowds. And it all began with removing the values and fail-safes of moral teachings like prayer in schools, display of the ten commandments, and nativity scenes.
If we continue to allow incline to the left, we are surely on the decline.
Estovir, this is a thought provoking post. I will present in summary a few thoughts while recognizing that you have your morality and I have mine, both starting with the Torah.
Virtue cannot be legislated
Laws, don’t build character
Ethics without virtue is hollow. And virtue can’t be taught in a boardroom or enforced by statute.
Milton Friedman’s ‘law’: ”
“The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”
He believed ethics were personal and not the role of corporations — unless legally required.
Our founders based our nation on Natural law, the Greeks on ethics and before that Homeric morals, honor, shame and the rest.
While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
– John Adams
From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
Estovir, John Adams is dead and buried. Are you throwing your cards in, to lie next to him? 🙂
S. Meyer—surely, you ought to know that there are philosophies and writings for the ages, and that is why response to great thoughts and literature is always in the present tense….John Adam’s body is certainly long-dead, but not his thoughts. “Throwing the cards in” is not about lying next to Adams’ immortal words, but standing with them: PRESENT TENSE!
Yes, but John Adams was speaking about his own time. Times change, and while we should remember our histories and philosophers, we also have to find new ways to help this generation through a period marked by an absence of spirituality. I don’t discount the past; I live it today through the Torah; that is far older than John Adams.
Thanks DB for your comments particularly this one:
the obdurate use of “separation of church and state” has not been a means of polite coexistence, but a means of eradication, going so far as to create bizarre and illogical conundrums, like blaming Christianity for most wars & death, quite literally leaving genocidists like Stalin and Trotsky, Mao and Polpot, in utter obscurity, thus fomenting hate and grave physical harms like church shootings and bombings, and religious persecutions, all with the eager sanction of those on the left who don’t know history.
You likely know that the original use of the phrase “separation of church and state” meant something very different than how it is used today. Read Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray’s book We Hold These Truths, a prescient work published in 1960, that argued America no longer has a consensus.
Today “separation of church and state” is a catch-all phrase used by atheists and those afraid of submitting to God (because faith is indeed about abandoning oneself) to mean whatever they wish it to mean. Indeed, the murdering of >1000 millions of people during the 20th Century by Stalin, Mao, Polpot, et al, far far outnumber the murders for all centuries combined prior to the 20th Century. And yet the atheist demands the theist addresses the “dark ages”, a comical and ignorant view of 1000 years of important history that is somehow supposed to be viewed as a travesty of a time period. And yet the 20th Century atheist tyrants don’t even get a nod for their truly horrific atrocities and genocides, except for Hitler who killed ~ 6M people in contrast to Stalin-Mao-Polpot > 100 M people.
Your comment brought to mind the recent trend of people rarely engaging in intellectual discourse or thought provoking dialogues, opting instead for quick, staccatto, disconnected verbiage or nonsupported opinions, rendering internet discourse unpersuasive, unstimulating and predictable making it all a bore. But in real life, face to face, it is possible. I have friends who are protestants of all persuasions; one recently asked me my thoughts on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I just about fell out of my chair, and this from a 32 y/o clinician. Other friends are Muslims, Hindus, atheists and so forth, and we manage to have stimulating conversations over coffee, in university labs and hallways, over cocktails in our homes. So it is possible
So thanks for your comment. Please consider contributing more often. As you mentioned wisely there are philosophies and writings for the ages, truly we need more reminders of such great writings, John Adams being one of them, but also like with Dostoyevsky’s “Beauty will save the world” (F. DOSTOYEVSKY, The Idiot, Part III, chap. 5.). Pope Francis often spoke on the need to teach others our shared history, our roots, our forefathers, to know who we are as a people
Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.
From this wonder there can come that enthusiasm of which Norwid spoke in the poem to which I referred earlier. People of today and tomorrow need this enthusiasm if they are to meet and master the crucial challenges which stand before us. Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that “beauty will save the world”.
– Pope John Paul II, 1999, Letter to Artists
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_23041999_artists.html
apologies for the HTML formatting errors. The italics should not apply to the entire comment.
here is the reference to Fr Murray’s book. Excellent read
We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition
JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY, S.J.
SHEED AND WARD, 1960
https://library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/Murray/whtt_index
“…America no longer has a consensus” (Murray); the Jesuit likely saw something seeding in the zeitgeist of those days that we are reaping in full “extravagance” today. One of those portents was the pivotal and necessary twisting of “separation of church and state,” which is not the language of law per se, but based upon the declaration that government may not exercise undue powers upon a church or participate in the corruption of religious liberty. We are seeing the outcome of 70+ years of removing the moral underpinnings of a predominantly Christian country under a misinterpreted, but legally wrangled misapplication—but you can’t tell them that: they’ve won too many cases….
While the law has been a civilizing parameter where basic civility (in its lowest form) and love (in its highest) and was once the measure of transcendence, law is now the measure of selfish society in the name of protecting narcissistic pursuit [self-advantage to the exclusion of others or the common good]. There is no doubt that the eradication of Christian values and respect for its primacy has led to the “loose bowels” of society, and the loss of marvels and entusiasms are the outward signals of inner squalidness (lack of any appreciation for the transcendent and divine). Brute selfishness [abortion and gender mutilating] and social atrocities [open cries for the killings of people and speech], are the tolling bells that tell us where “separation of church and state” litigations have gotten us….
In the 2022, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, the Supreme Court declared that it would interpret the “Establishment Clause,” which denotes the first amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”…“in reference to historical practices and understandings.” Writing for the majority opinion, Neil Gorsuch writes that the lower courts had created a “vice between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free-Speech/ Free-Exercise clauses on the other; he noted that the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses were complementary and worked together to DECREASE UNNECESSARY GOVERNMENT INTERERNCE WITH RELIGION. Once again, we see the original intent of the original language coming through, in spite of the many inaccurate “separation of church and state” claims.
As for the loss of civil discourse and the necessary practice of dialectic thought for the development of mind and spirit, the skills are fast being lost to the new and constrained paradigm of social activism in the K-12 classrooms and beyond, where thinking too hard or too fair can lead to an aneurysm, or a riot, or MORE litigation.
Thanks for the reading suggestions!
Thank you , Estovir, for a very well thought out Big Picture review & profound analysis.. your wisdom is very rich and spot on.. ..agree that the programming that happens while we are growing up definitely is at the Heart of our Behaviour in later years.. what Ethics we live by, play by and pray by… When all in the USA lived by (more or less) the same Judeo-Christian foundations of the Founding Fathers up through the 1950’s as you pointed oiut.. and even through the 1960’s…. somewhat into the 1970’s, 1980’s everything seemed to be more managable.. respect for All, incl. Authority was OK… NAFTA signed by Bill Clinton really opened the door for Change.. (I won’t go into that here) Now fast forward to to-day.. we have Celebrity Media Stars who think they are good journalists or politicians shouting at us daily from Their ‘ethics’ perch things like ‘POTUS must be stopped..’ ‘POTUS must be taken down…’ and this noise starts to cause a a lot of outrage and confusion on all sides, for example. when the Celebrities are Muslims who grew up in the grips of extremist Islam..now inside the USA… calling for violence here…only one facet of a multi-faceted situation…Suffice to say at this time that you have opened up a deeper look into a now volcanic state of affairs of conflicting ‘ethics…’
“I wrote a paper for a course on business law and ethics, and shared it with a friend of mine, my former lawyer, now a circuit judge, one of my closest friends, an atheist, and argued that no amount of laws could ever guide a business organization on how to be moral or ethical. It was up to “choice” not “laws…”
When I responded, I wished you held answers I lacked. Then I came across this week’s Parsha, which offered an obvious answer. I thought you might be interested.
Leviticus 19:36:
“You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am the LORD your God.” [Honesty in trade is sacred; corrupt business practices are spiritual failures.]
Unfortunately, many people don’t turn to the Torah or other virtuous sources as their guide. What secular force tries to do the same, though based on fear rather than love? Contract law. At its core, one could say the Torah represents contract law, with built-in consequences.
I looked back and asked myself: How do I run my business life in light of these standards? What I saw was this, full disclosure, even when it’s not to my benefit, and a clear, detailed contract. Good businesses don’t need special gimmicks. They need a level playing field, sensible laws, and virtuous enforcement.
GianCarlo Canaparo , Senior legal fellow, The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies !!!!!
#9. America today is a country where anyone is guilty of anything, or everyone is guilty of something. There are no longer any innocent people under the law in this Nation, Only those guilty of being below the law due to their economic status, or above the law due to their political status.
#9. America today is a country where anyone is guilty of anything, or everyone is guilty of something. There are no longer any innocent people under the law in this Nation, Only those guilty of being below the law due to their economic status, or above the law due to their political status.
Well, the Ten Commandments have resisted adding #11 and#12, but in the future, we may need to have the New Improved Ten Commandments:
1. Thou shall not:
(a)
(b)
2. Thou shall not:
(a)
(b)
(i)
(ii)
(c)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
All silliness aside, we must remember that an important purpose of statutory law is to provide notice, as most crimes require knowledge of the illegal nature of the prohibited conduct or activity, and the old maxim, “ignorantia juris non excusat,” or ignorance of the law does not excuse. Never practiced criminal law per se, but I do remember exceptions to the above rule, e.g.,
the seminal case of Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225 (1957). I suspect as each new court decision contributes to new, improved codification of offenses, there will be a commensurate nuancing of whether or not ignorance is acceptable as a defense.
Federal prosecution of crime functions very much a dynamical system of assorted complex pendulums. Way back, it was organized crime in its many forms including interstate crimes. Then came white collar crime, and its many sub-legs of the equity, bribery, political, and influence peddling types. In the meantime, the leg of standard crime prosecutions decreased, but recently the migratory crime prosecutions have increased. Biden, of course, created new types of crime such as parents crime for objecting as school meetings.
The exponential growth and selective prosecution Federal Statutes does have a date and a name attached beginning. At the End of President Hoover’s tenure there were approximately 1776 Statutes. By the End of FDR’s first year in office the number doubled and number of statutes and regulations has doubled and redoubled every administration since until President Trump executive or requiring the elimination of 2 old regulations for the creation of a new regulation. Strangely enough selective prosecution of political foes began at the same time. While President Roosevelt could not fill out his income tax form he directed the DOJ to pursue prosecution of multi millionaire and philanthropist Mellon because “Mellon wasn’t paying his fair share of taxes “.
Good luck Professor, and thank you.
“… There are an estimated 5,000 federal crimes and hundreds of thousands of
regulatory crimes.(3) These federal crimes overlay state crimes, which have also expanded
exponentially. …”
And not one of them Applied to; Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton et.al.*
“… “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be
indicted for some federal crime. (5) …”
Only those with a Retro-Revolving -Pardon like Hunter Biden.
“… This means that an ever-larger percentage of our population is being pulled into the criminal justice system and often left with lasting and life-changing criminal records. (16) …”
Like You & Me but not Hunter Biden [How did he pass his SF-86 Examination? (Standard Form 86 – Questionnaire for National Security)].
(3) See John C. Coffee, Jr., Does “Unlawful” Mean “Criminal”?: Reflections on the Disappearing
Tort/Crime Distinction in American Law, 71 B.U. L. REV. 193, 216 (1991).
(5) William N. Clark & Artem M. Joukov, The Criminalization of America, 76 Ala. Law. 224, 224
(2015) (quoted and cited by Gamble v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 1960, 2008 n.98 (2019) (Gorsuch, J.,
dissenting)).
(16) Gorsuch, Neil., Nitze, Janie. Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law. United
States: HarperCollins, 2024.
Police State
A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties.
po·lice state
/pəˈlēs ˌstāt/
noun
noun: police state; plural noun: police states
a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens’ activities.
*et.al.:
Adam Schiff | Alexander Downer | Alexander Vindman | Alvin Bragg
Andrew McCabe | Andrew Weissmann | Andrew Whitney | Azra Turk
Barack Obama | Bill Priestap | Bill Taylor | Bruce Ohr
Charles H. Dolan | Christopher Steele | Christopher Wray
Cody Shear | Dana Remus | Daniel Goldman | Don Berlin
Donna Brazile | E.W. Priestap | Eirc Holder | Emmet Sullivan
Eric Ciaramella | Eugene Vindman | Evelyn Farkas | Fani Willis
Fiona Hill | Gen. Milley | George Soros | Gina Haspel
Glenn Simpson | Gov. Janet Mills | Hillary Clinton | Huma Abedin
Hunter Biden | Igor Danchenko | Jake Sullivan | James Baker
James Clapper | James Comey | James E | Boasberg
Jeff Sessions | Jerry Nadler | Joe Biden | John Bolton
John Brennan | John Kerry | John McCabe | John McCain
John Podesta | Joseph Mifsud | Juan Merchan et al | Judge Arthur Engoron
Kadzic | Kathy Ruemmler | Kevin Clinesmith | Kurt Campbell
L. Jean Camp | Laycock | Lerner | Letitia James
Lisa O. Monaco | Lisa Page | Lois Lerner | Loretta Lynch
Marc Elias | Matthew Colangelo | Merrick Garland | Michael Cohen
Michael Kortan | Michael Sussmann | Nancy Pelosi | Nellie Ohr
Paul Vixie | Perkins Coie et.al. | Peter Fritsch | Peter Strzok
Power | Richard Dearlove | Richard Schiff | Robby Mook
Rod Rosenstein | Rodney Joffe | Ron Klain | Sally Yates
Stefan Halper | Stormy Daniels | Strobe Talbot | Susan E. Rice
The Mueller-Team | Tom Rice | Valerie Jarrett | Victoria Nuland
The Dems | … | … | … and the Pardoned
Re: “et. al.” You missed Neera Tanden and the other Members of the Domestic Policy Council who took over the autopen approach to executive power as well as using the same pen to align “over-criminalization” against targeted opponents through the US Attorney General Merrick Garland who wielded that sword as revenge anger for his loss of a SCOTUS seat where he would have used power to write law from that bench. HOWEVER:
Professor Turley’s testimony and the diligent research and preparation required resulted in a truly intellectual argument and visionary clarity. Thank you sir!
Either I missed or you missed Mary McCord, I just hope President Trump doesn’t.
JT builds a nice and tidy catalogue of abuses here, but misses a major point. The public does not see it the way JT sees it. What the public sees is the under–not over-criminalization of federal laws. Yes, it’s easy, as JT shows, to flyspeck this topic by finding outrageous examples of a certain thesis, but the public sees none of that or very little of that. Instead, the public sees things like the Biden scandals broomed, the FBI’s Russiagate scandal broomed, and Hillary Clinton’s email scandal broomed. So many other serious crimes simply vanish like they never occurred, while Trump and his supporters are treated like the villains in Les Misérables by inept and corrupt state and federal prosecutors who pay no price for their crimes.
JT does mention, to his credit, the incredibly high cost of defending one’s reputation. This is where the dark underside of our vaunted system of jurisprudence begins to show its rot. The J6 prosecutions brought this to the public’s attention by overcharging people with massively serious crimes, knowing they would be terrified into pleading guilty to lesser offences. So what if we ruined a few thousand lives of innocent people in the process? We showed them and everyone else just how truly virtuous we are, right?
The cop who murdered Ashli Babbitt was treated as a hero, the man who saved the Capitol and its valuable and irreplaceable members. He got a medal while the rest of us got to buy off the Babbitt family and attorneys with a purported $30 million in taxpayers’ money. Yes, JT, tell your stories about the poor fisherman and scrap metal dealer who were tossed in the can for relatively minor offences; the members love hearing stories like this; it gives both sides opportunities to be magnanimously on the side of the little guy. But, JT, whatever you do, do not mention the big guy or all the other big guys because no one on that committee cares or wants to know about them because most of them are themselves big guys.
Good luck, today.
Excellent comment, jjc. As long as there are tyrants willing to abuse their authority, it really doesn’t matter how many laws are on the books.
There is a reason Ron Paul recommended only one book that everyone should read: The Law, by Frederic Bastiat.
Thank you, Olly, for that great suggestion. A reprint of Bastiat’s great article from the mid-1800s about socialism in the days before the Revolution of 1848 in France is available from Amazon.com for $3.50 and worth every penny, especially in this time when pop-socialism seems to be the latest fad for Democrats and misfits alike.
Though I like to comment here over your refusal to call fascist a fascist, you are still the best advocate for a return to reason/rule of law and one of the good guys. Thanks for all of your hard work.
I’m curious whether, if President Trump nominated you (I think it would be unlikely), you would be interested in a seat on the Supreme Court. We would all benefit.
Hey Anon, If by fascist you are referring to the woke Left, cancel culture robots, a copromised fourth estate, lunatic university personnel, antifa, BLM, the Biden administration etal then I am in full agreement with you.
It may be a qualifying factor for professor Turley that he generally refrains from incendiary rhetoric and focuses on facts and events, you know, accurate information, to offer insights.
unless you are an illegal, democrat donor, democrat judge or democrat politician…then you are free to commit crimes!
Shouldn’t the comment be reworded to say, “if you are an illegal, democrat donor, democrat judge or democrat politician…then you are free to commit crimes!” The implication of the comment is that the 4 named are the only ones who are not ‘free’ to commit crimes.
The nature of our judicial, criminal, and political atmosphere prevalent in our national society and absence of conscience for enforcing laws of substance instead of interpretations of and enforcement by unelected bureaucrats working behind the scenes with anonymity, therefore avoiding any responsibility for the outcomes of their decisions to add to the herculean volume of crimes for decades post FDR administration.
As noted, anyone can be charged with a crime by simply leaving the confines of their domicile and venturing into the public arena. The situation addressed by JT 27 years ago and again today has not improved, it has expanded beyond any sense of reason and responsibility by our elected representatives who in reality, have no damn clue of the harm they inflict by not clarifying and denoting exactly what the resulting charges for a criminal act spelled out in the legislation and not be left up to the unelected to allow their ideological and political affiliations to color their interpretation and the subsequent punishment for a crime they created.