Many are above the law; and another underclass day

By Chris Powell

Connecticut should laugh at the pious assertion by the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and others upon the indictment of former President Trump for misappropriating classified government documents — the assertion that no one is above the law.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith said, “We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.”

No, they don’t.

Yes, if even half of the indictment is accurate, Trump is twice as crazy and dangerous as even his biggest critics have charged. But to disprove the assertion of equal justice, it isn’t necessary to note, as some Republicans will do, the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute President Biden and his son, Hunter, for their longstanding influence-peddling business. Every day of ordinary life in Connecticut disproves the assertion.

For while entering the United States without authority remains against federal immigration law, Connecticut is estimated to house 120,000 immigration lawbreakers with the full knowledge of both the federal government and state government. Despite the Constitution’s requirement that the president will “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the Biden administration’s policy is open borders.

With various laws and policies, state government facilitates illegal immigration, and the state obstructed enforcement of federal immigration law back when the federal government tried to enforce it. Now the federal government seldom bothers to enforce immigration law in Connecticut. From the time of Andrew Jackson the federal government strove to smash what is called nullification, the claim that a state can override federal law. But now the federal government has accepted Connecticut’s nullification.

It is the same with marijuana, whose possession and sale remain felonies under federal law despite state government’s recent enthusiastic licensing and participation in the marijuana trade. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has acknowledged that the Biden administration will not enforce federal marijuana law where state governments don’t want it enforced — more nullification.

Meanwhile Connecticut often fails to enforce its nominally rigorous gun laws, with most criminal gun charges canceled by plea bargaining because there is so much more crime than prosecutorial strength and state government hates putting people in jail, even for gun crime.

To excuse him, Trump supporters may seize on the federal government’s hypocrisy. But the hypocrisy of accusers doesn’t excuse; it just indicts the accusers as well.

Trump may have a better claim for a lenient sentence: that those classified documents were more secure in his bathroom than in the vaults of a government that recently made classified documents available to a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member with a fetish for guns, plotting murder, and blabbing on the internet.

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Connecticut now is said to have the distinction of paying the biggest penalty for police brutality – the $45 million settlement with Randy Cox for the paralysis he suffered a year ago in the custody of the New Haven Police Department. But the case isn’t really about police brutality at all.

For nobody meant to hurt Cox, and the devastating damage to his spinal cord was done before police handled him callously to get him into a cell at headquarters.

The incident began with Cox’s getting drunk, carrying a gun illegally, and brandishing it at a street party, prompting people to call police.

It continued with the reckless driving of the car that forced the police van carrying Cox to stop short, sending him flying head-first into the van wall, since the van lacked seat belts for passengers.

Then there were the officers conditioned by years of dealing with drunks and the mentally ill, officers who didn’t believe this drunk when he said he couldn’t move. So they dragged him out of the van.

Eventually that $45 million will come from all Connecticut’s taxpayers, for impoverished New Haven is a ward of the state.

Drunkenness, gunplay, reckless driving, antiquated equipment, jadedness — it was all just a day with Connecticut’s urban underclass. Tomorrow will be another day, costly in its own way.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

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