An excerpt of some of AG Barr’s speech last week are set forth below the introduction and video of it that we have embedded. The video/speech runs about an hour. We recommend at least rolling through it but it is well worth the time to listen to it all.
Via Gary Bowers at American Values
In an address to the Federalist Society Friday night, Attorney General William Barr took the swamp to task and blasted the left for “shredding constitutional norms.”
While much of his speech served as a treatise on the Constitution and executive authority, Barr devoted a significant portion of his remarks to how left-wing politicians and judges have abused their authority at the expense of the presidency, and most especially this president. Barr warned that progressives “treat politics as their religion,” using the “coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image.”
Here are some excerpts of the attorney general’s remarks:
“Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called ‘The Resistance,’ and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his administration. . .
“A prime example of this is the Senate’s unprecedented abuse of the advice-and-consent process. . . As of September of this year, the Senate had been forced to [limit debate] on 236 Trump nominees — each of those representing its own massive consumption of legislative time . . . How many times was cloture invoked on nominees during President Obama’s first term? 17 times. . .
“One of the ironies of today is that those who oppose this president constantly accuse this administration of ‘shredding’ constitutional norms and waging a war on the rule of law. . . The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. . .
“Since President Trump took office, district courts have issued over 40 nationwide injunctions against the government. By comparison, during President Obama’s first two years, district courts issued a total of two nationwide injunctions. . .
“It is no exaggeration to say that virtually every major policy of the Trump Administration has been subjected to immediate freezing by the lower courts. No other president has been subjected to such sustained efforts to debilitate his policy agenda.”
Attorney General Barr also ripped the legacy of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote key decisions granting constitutional rights to terrorists captured on foreign battlefields. Referring to one of Kennedy’s rulings, Barr said, “The idea that the judiciary acts as a neutral check on the political branches to protect foreign enemies from our government is insane.”
This commentary at Americans for Limited Government defends Barr’s comments from some attacks by the usual suspects using a Hamiltonian understanding.
Attorney General Barr is right, the left is deconstructing the Constitution and the Presidency (excerpt)
Barr is right. The revolution we are witnessing today by the so-called resistance is the deconstruction of the Constitution and the Article II presidency writ large by courts implementing nationwide injunctions on clearly constitutional presidential acts like the travel ban or building the wall using reprogrammed monies, and Congressional attempts to usurp executive power away to unaccountable administrative state agencies. . . .
And, the executive power was meant to be separate and distinct from the judicial and legislative powers. Per Barr, “Just as the great separation-of-powers theorists — Polybius, Montesquieu, Locke — had, the Framers thought of Executive power as a distinct specie of power.”
This includes “carrying into effect the laws passed by the Legislature — that is, applying the general rules to a particular situation”; “the power to handle essential sovereign functions — such as the conduct of foreign relations and the prosecution of war — which by their very nature cannot be directed by a pre-existing legal regime but rather demand speed, secrecy, unity of purpose, and prudent judgment to meet contingent circumstances”; . . .
We would add the observation that the legislative can have its supremacy even within a separation of powers understanding but it takes a display of national moment by a super conglomeration of such representatives, reflecting something to challenge what a nationally elected president presumes.
