“Lock her up!” fared at or near the top of  the Most Memorable Rally Chants charts in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Turning that election into a referendum on Hillary Clinton — and particularly on the seeming impunity she enjoyed after getting caught illegally storing classified materials on an unofficial server — may have made the difference in securing Trump his four years of residence at the White House.

It was thus no surprise that Democrats responded to MAGA protests over the supposed injustice of an FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, seeking illicitly retained classified materials, with eye rolls and a smirking “but her emails!”

If you’re looking for hypocrisy, there’s no need to pick a side here — it’s rife on BOTH sides.

Based on then FBI director James Comey’s 2016 press briefing (and later testimony before Congress), it’s fair to say that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, knowingly and willfully violated 18 US Code §793 (“Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”) and §1924 (“Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material”) and that, had she been charged and tried, would have been convicted of those offenses by an impartial jury.

Why wasn’t she so charged, tried, and convicted? Why do today’s Trump-haters write off the whole incident as just vicious political skulduggery?

Because she’s Hillary Clinton.

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant specified one of those same two US Code sections (§793), as well as §1519 (“Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy”) and §2071 (“Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally [of government documents]”).

Why does MAGA World object to the investigation resulting in the warrant (and prospectively to any prosecution) as mere political skulduggery?

Because the subject of that investigation is Donald Trump.

Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.

Yes, there are plenty of raw political machinations going on here. If Hillary Clinton hadn’t run for president, and if Donald Trump hadn’t actually BEEN president, these incidents would have gone down as minor and forgettable scandals, like former Bill Clinton administration official Sandy Berger’s barely remembered theft and destruction of classified documents from the National Archives.

But in BOTH cases, political officials, including Clinton and Trump, should be subject to the same “rule of law” they enthusiastically inflict on the rest of us at every opportunity.

If there’s probable cause to believe that Trump committed a crime, he should be prosecuted for that crime, just like anyone else.

And, the statute of limitations not having yet run on Clinton’s violations of 18 USC §793 (which, as has been bullhorned concerning Trump, is part of the Espionage Act), she should be prosecuted as well.

Perp walks! Orange coveralls! Maybe they can even share a cell, the better to catch up on old times.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In an effort to keep up with the times and serve a profitable market segment,  southern-style comfort-food restaurant chain Cracker Barrel recently added a new item to its menu.

“Experience the out of this world flavor of Impossible [TM] Sausage,” the “Old Country Store” announced in an August 1 Facebook post, accompanied by a photo of two of the plant-based patties.

Responses across thousands of comments vary from gratitude to “meh, I’ll stick with the real thing” to … well, here’s a somewhat representative sample from commenter “Barry Deaton”:

“I just want to know why all these companies feel that they have to follow the leader on all of this crap. Cracker Barrel is a great company and they got great Without Woke Meat. Get the message most people don’t want this crap. You are only appealing to a small percentage of people. I still love Cracker Barrel but please stick to your roots.”

Yes, there are even calls going around for a boycott.

My priors were, thankfully, not confirmed when I clicked on a link to a piece by minister Brett Younger at Baptist News Global titled “Are left-wing radicals pushing Cracker Barrel to the edge of the slippery slope?”

“They call it ‘comfort food’ for a reason, writes Younger. “It makes us feel comfortable. The latest silliness is not about sausage but fear of change. Social media magnifies our foolishness, so we need to think about which wars are worth fighting.”

Can I get an amen?

Cracker Barrel isn’t “going woke.” Cracker Barrel is noticing a market opportunity and hoping to profit from it.

Somewhere between 5% and 10% of Americans (depending on which poll you look at) consider themselves “vegetarians” or “vegans.”

More than one in five Americans say they’re eating less meat, mostly for health reasons.

That’s a lot of people buying and eating a lot of food.

If I had to guess at Cracker Barrel’s demographic focus, I’d guess it’s on the high side — lots of early Gen Xers and Boomers, many of whom have been told by their doctors to cut back on the meat (especially red meat) for heart health, to reduce cholesterol levels, etc. — and families with internally diverse dietary needs and preferences.

That’s why Cracker Barrel’s menu already includes options like chicken sausage links and egg whites.

Let me emphasize: Options!

You can still get “Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast”:  “Two eggs with choice of Breakfast Side plus Country Fried Steak or Fried Sunday Homestyle Chicken. Served with Biscuits n’ Gravy.”

You can still get the “Country Boy Breakfast” — three eggs, sirloin steak AND ham, and biscuits with gravy.

They’re not going to chain you to a chair and force-feed you egg whites and Impossible [TM] Sausage.

You could also drive through Burger King and order an Impossible [TM] plant-based Whopper, or the original with a beef patty.

Or you can sit at home and eat spinach, or chocolate-covered pork rinds.

Relax. Variety and choice are the spice of life. And the exact opposite of “woke.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 2, voters in Kansas rejected an amendment to the state constitution which would have increased the legislature’s power to regulate (or ban) abortion.

Pro-choice groups hailed the outcome as evidence that abortion rights are a “winning issue” this year; partisan Democrats have reason to look more hopefully toward their chances of holding on to majorities in the US Senate, and maybe even the House of Representatives, this November.

More interesting, I think, is what the result tells us about where the “moderate center” is in American politics. Letting people vote on one specific issue often produces very different outcomes from letting people vote on “representatives” based on the candidates’ baskets of multiple issues.

In order to understand where Kansas is going after the referendum, it’s useful to consider where it started prior to the referendum and what passage would have changed.

Per existing Kansas law, abortion is already banned after 22 weeks. Parental consent is required for minors seeking the procedure. There’s a 24-hour waiting period for the procedure.  Government funding for abortion is only available if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life.

In other words, Kansas without the amendment was neither paradise for the “ban it from conception” crowd nor Utopia for the “it’s an absolute right up to the moment of birth” crowd.

Had the amendment passed, the constitution would have explicitly stated that abortion is not a “right” and that the state legislature could impose additional restrictions on it.

By defeating the amendment, Kansans chose to keep things just as they already were.

Had this been a legislative election, the voters would have likely faced a binary choice between Republicans who wanted more government regulation of abortion, and Democrats who wanted less government restriction of abortion.

The voters comprising the big “center” — those who may or may not be comfortable with abortion, but resemble neither of the polar “ban it” or “don’t touch it” ends of the issue — wouldn’t have had an option there. They’d likely have gone with one of the two parties based not on (or at least not JUST on) abortion, but on a whole raft of issues and personalized identity affiliations.

In a close election, the “extremist” voters on either side might  provide the margin of victory to one side or the other, and would certainly claim that victory as indicating support for their positions, but that claim would ring hollow.

In this single-issue referendum, “extremist” voters were swamped by “moderate” voters who might or might not support the existing restrictions, but see no reason to expand those restrictions — or at least no reason to trust legislators with that power.

As someone who doesn’t always trust the collective judgments of “the people,” but who trusts the judgments of politicians even less, I find that result quite pleasing.

Unfortunately, this outcome highlights why a “centrist” party can’t win in “representative” elections. Our system is designed to divvy up the “center” into large, roughly equal partisan blocs so that “extremists” control the balance of power.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY