J.D. Vance (who obtained his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in May 2013 and was admitted to the bar in Kentucky later that year) lied after Renee Good’s murder when he made this baseless declaration:

“You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That’s a federal issue. That guy’s protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

Should we not assume that the federal agents who murdered Alex Pretti believed that they too — based on Vance’s declaration — were protected by “absolute immunity”?

If these agents ever go on trial, this will surely be part of their defense: that they took the Vice President of the United States at his word and believed they were protected by absolute immunity.

As a lawyer, Vance must be aware not only that federal agents are not protected by absolute immunity, but also that as Vice President neither is he.

Trump and those around him are, by their critics, often described as shameless liars, none more so than Stephen Miller.

As Axios reported, immediately after the shooting:

Miller “heard ‘gun’ and knew what the narrative would be: Pretti came to ‘massacre’ cops,” a source briefed on the process of assembling the press statement said.

The speed with which Miller ramped up his wildly inflammatory rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of Alex Pretti’s killing reminded me of another performance in lying — the one memorably delivered by the comedian, Jon Lovitz, in his famous sketch as the self-described President of Pathological Liars Anonymous.

Lovitz portrays a liar who not only harbors the conceit that he’s getting away with all his lies, but who also becomes ever more enamored with his own lies.

Lying is his talent. He proudly shows it off and freely performs on the fly.

Stephen Miller does exactly the same thing — except he’s never intentionally funny.

* * *

Timothy Snyder writes:

In a constitutional regime, such as ours, the law applies everywhere and at all times. In a republic, such as ours, it applies to everyone. For that logic of law to be undone, the aspiring tyrant looks for openings, for cracks to pry open.

One of these is the border. The country stops at the border. And so the law stops at the border. And so for the tyrant an obvious move is to extend the border so that is everywhere, to turn the whole country as a border area, where no rules apply.

Stalin did this with border zones and deportations in the 1930s that preceded the Great Terror. Hitler did it with immigration raids in 1938 that targeted undocumented Jews and forced them across the border.

And just what is Trump doing now? By his own admission, as well as by the admission of cabinet members, he is using ICE, nominally a border authority, to enforce his own whims on an American state of his choosing. It is not legal to attack a city because its policies work. It is not legal to threaten a state to gain information about its voters.

The border becomes the pretext to undo the law everywhere, at all times, and against anyone. It is the crack that can be opened. The wedge is the lie.

The lies begin as clichés, memes that are pounded into our heads by the government and by those in the media who repeat them, mindlessly or with malice.

One of these cliches is “law enforcement,” which is uttered over and over like a incantation. “Law enforcement” is not a noun. It is not a thing in the world. It is an action.

And action is something that we have a right to see and judge for ourselves. People enforcing the law do not wear masks. And people wearing masks who trespass, assault, batter, and kill are not enforcing the law.

They are violating it.

It is indeed the job of some local, state, and federal authorities to enforce the law. It is a disservice to them when federal employees carry out public executions. It is a greater disservice to them when such actions are defined as “law enforcement.” [Continue reading…]