One Up, One Down

Two seemingly unrelated events occurred back to back which will have an enormous impact on democracy, government accountability, and the rule of law.  

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.  Despite meeting each and every element of 793(f) of Title 18 of the federal penal code, Hillary Clinton will not be recommended for prosecution by FBI Director James Comey.   While Comey found that Hillary was “extremely careless” in her handling of the email, somehow that extreme carelessness was a smidgen short of the “gross negligence” that the statute requires.  Worse, Comey spent a great deal of time talking about a lack of intent, although “gross negligence,” and not “intent” is the standard written into the statute.  (See Andrew McCarthy’s  National Review column http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/437479/fbi-rewrites-federal-law-let-hillary-hook).  Justice Scalia must be rolling over in his grave as prosecutorial activism has supplanted judicial activism as a means to a result.   And throwing even more suspicion on this outcome was Bill Clinton’s “chance” meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch just a few days before, where for 30 minutes, the two exchanged pleasantries over “golf” and “grandchildren.”  This all smacks of Putinism, and once again, Hillary slips out from being held to account for her behavior –behavior which exposed classified information and may have endangered U.S. agents and their sources.   Comey’s decision reinforces the view that “laws are for little people,” and that we are being governed by a political elite that create rules for us, and from which they are exempt, even when that bad behavior is violative of the laws passed by the People’s representatives and endangers national security.   We have now seen that we can have sanctuary cities where existing immigration laws are unenforced, where the I.R.S. can be used as a tool to harass political enemies with impunity, and where a public servant can blatantly violate laws specifically written to protect American lives, and there are no consequences.  Most egregiously, the nation’s top prosecutor can meet privately and secretly with a material witness just days before the FBI’s determination.    Taken together, the whole sordid episode looks something more like Putin’s Russia than the republic envisioned by the Founders.

But just a week earlier, the British took affirmative steps to make their government and the rules they live by more accountable to the people.  Despite all of the caterwauling about leaving the EU, and the charges of xenophobia and bigotry that supposedly underpinned the “Leave”movement, Brexit is a significant, courageous step toward bringing back government accountability.   Sure, unfettered immigration was a major issue for the British decision to exit the EU.  But a second and important issue is accountability.  As Pat Condell so eloquently put it in his impassioned plea (patcondell.net), the EU (like the U.S. regulatory bodies) has enormous power and authority, accountable essentially to no one to write rules and regulations that bind the British people.  And the British people had no ability to vote these people out of office.  And regulators do what they do and that is to regulate.  The Brits, seeing Brussels regulate things as inane as the curvature of bananas, said, “enough.”   Despite the hysterical warnings from the Left of the potential economic consequences of the pullout, the British people decided to wrest control over their own borders and over rulemaking back from the central authorities in Brussels.  While Brexit creates some uncertainty, the actual effect is not likely to be material over the long run.  London with still be a financial center, British companies will still trade with other European companies and others, and Great Britain will still be an important ally in NATO.   On balance, it will be a good thing for the British people.  It restores their voice in their own affairs and that, I  believe, is worth the tradeoff.

But I see these two events on two different continents—Brexit and the Clinton investigation as separate fronts in the same struggle in the West, and they actually mirror each other.  These are battles over putting decision making power back where it belongs—in the hands of the People through their elected representatives and making sure that political leaders are accountable to the people, transparent, and not above the law.

The British people saw their voice taken away and through the EU had delegated to unaccountable bureaucratic rulemakers in Brussels that were dictating how they should live.  Likewise, in America, we have had vast social and economic changes dictated to us in which we had no voice at all.   Local democratic decisions over gay marriage were rejected and that issue was essentially decided by a single individual.  Gay marriage was followed immediately by a directive to force schools to make available bathrooms and lockerooms to transgenders – again, taking it out of the hands of local authorities.  On another important issue—immigration, the Obama administration has repeatedly tried to avoid the democratic process with his “pen and phone.”   His administration has attempted to kill entire industries—coal and electronic cigarettes by regulating them out of business, and again, the people have had no say in it.   Through HUD, he has even attempted to dictate what our neighborhood will look like.    The two most significant pieces of legislation passed during his administration—Dodd Frank and the Affordable Care Act were not so much laws as outlines for a regulatory scheme that was to be written.  Again, out of the public eye, subject to no vote by our representatives and granting unknown, unaccountable regulators wide authority to impose his or her own will on us without any cost/benefit analysis or public scrutiny.  Under Obama, it’s been regulators gone wild.  Great Britain has rejected nonaccountable, nondemocratic lawmaking and has pulled this authority closer to home.

The failure to recommend indictment of Clinton was indeed a setback for government accountability and the rule of law.  That a top government official (who is also seeking to be the nation’s leader) entrusted with the most sensitive secrets of the government was so intent on not being transparent that she jeopardized national security and endangered peoples’ lives will not be held to account is a huge blow to our system and the rule of law.

In this round, the British were victorious in their efforts to make government more accountable, transparent and democratic.  America lost this round.