On February 9, the US Justice Department announced that US President Joe Biden, as in so many other areas, intends to serve Donald Trump’s second term when it comes to persecuting heroes guilty of exposing US war crimes and embarrassing American politicians.

As Trump’s presidency drew to an end, some activists held out hope that he’d pardon political prisoner Julian Assange, whose incarceration at the hands of the Swedish, British, and US governments has, according to the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, gone on for more than a decade now (between British prisons and de facto house arrest in Ecuador’s London embassy). No dice. Trump handed out plenty of pardons to political cronies, but left Assange in stir.

In January, British judge Vanessa Baraitser declined to extradite the founder of WikiLeaks to the US on trumped up (pun intended) espionage charges. Not because the charges are clearly nonsense, though they are. Nor because neither Assange’s person  or his alleged actions were subject to US jurisdiction, though they weren’t. She denied the extradition because she (probably correctly) considers Assange a suicide risk if he’s handed over.

The Biden regime intends to appeal Baraitser’s decision instead of dropping the false charges, firing the prosecutors who filed them, pardoning Assange, and awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, all of which would come to far to less than he deserves.

Biden’s attitude is less surprising than Trump’s. During the 2016 campaign, Trump praised WikiLeaks for releasing Democratic National Committee emails that detailed the joint campaign between the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to ensure that she, and not US Senator Bernie Sanders, received the party’s presidential nomination.

Prior to that, WikiLeaks had embarrassed then Secretary of State Clinton with its “Cablegate” release, which demonstrated that Clinton had ordered US diplomats to spy on UN officials.

And even before that, WikiLeaks had released “Collateral Murder,” a classified US military video of US troops murdering Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists in Baghdad. The murders took place before Obama became president,  but his regime participated in the military’s cover-up of the incident and oversaw its failure to bring the killers to justice.

You can probably see why Joe Biden is less inclined than Donald Trump to let such a “criminal” walk free. If there’s a mystery here, it’s not why Biden won’t do the right thing; it’s why Trump didn’t.

The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but if they grind exceedingly fine the British courts will deny extradition with finality and free Assange, while Biden, Trump, and numerous others will eventually answer to charges of violating US Code, Title 18, Sections 241 and 242 — conspiracy against Julian Assange’s rights and deprivation of those rights under color of law.

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

• “Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 02/12/21
• “Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 02/15/21
• “Same as the old boss — Julian Assange Edition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 02/16/21
• “Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 02/17/21
• “New boss same as the old boss,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Lebanon, Indiana Reporter, 02/23/21
• “Same as the Old Boss, Julian Assange Edition,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Seoul, Republic of Korea Times, 02/21

As I write this, the US Senate is cranking up for its trial of former President Donald J. Trump. The House impeached Trump on January 13, a week before the end of his term, on one article charging him with “incitement of insurrection” in the form of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Even Trump’s most ardent opponents hold out little hope of conviction. That would require the votes of 67 US Senators, at least 17 of whom would have to be Republicans. And 45 of 50 Republican Senators have already voted against holding the trial at all, on grounds that it would be “unconstitutional” because Trump is no longer president.

It’s not unconstitutional. The Constitution’s plain language,  precedent in both US and pre-revolutionary British practice, and a common sense holding that the founders would not prescribe a penalty (disqualification from future office) that could be rendered toothless by resignation, make it clear that an official can be tried (and impeached) after leaving office. In fact, some Republicans advocated doing exactly that to former Vice-President Joe Biden only months ago over his alleged corruption vis a vis Ukraine and Burisma.

Nor do other Republican excuses — that trying the impeachment would violate Trump’s First Amendment rights, for example, or that Chief Justice John Roberts is constitutionally required to preside at the trial — hold water. Impeachment is a political, not criminal, proceeding, to which the First Amendment is irrelevant. The Chief Justice presides at the trials of presidents, not former presidents (Democratic US Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont will preside at Trump’s trial).

Nor do those excuses explain why Republicans will almost unanimously vote to acquit, any more than an honest belief in Trump’s guilt explains why Democrats will unanimously or almost unanimously vote to convict.

What does explain the nearly inevitable outcome? That the trial is, as I mentioned, a political proceeding.

House Democrats voted to impeach, and Senate Democrats will vote to convict, because they believe doing so improves their personal political prospects and the political prospects of their party.

Most House Republicans voted against impeachment, and most Senate Republicans will vote to acquit, because they believe it’s the least bad option available where their personal and party political prospects are concerned.

“Least bad” isn’t “good,” but this is a “heads the Democrats win, tales the Republicans lose” situation.

Voting to convict exposes Republican Senators to primary challenges from Trump loyalists come next election, and possibly even a fatal split in the GOP itself.

Voting to acquit leaves them right where they were, with the rotting albatross of the Trump presidency hanging around their collective neck. It’s a tough call and probably leaves them in the congressional minority and out of White House contention for the next few years either way.

Trump’s actual guilt or innocence — which you may notice I’ve offered no opinion on — is as irrelevant to his second impeachment trial as it was to his first.

The moral of the story: Politics is very expensive, but not very suspenseful, dinner theater.

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

• “Why the Senate Will Acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 02/09/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate Will Acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Elko, Nevada Daily, 02/09/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate will acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentuck New Era, 02/10/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate Will Acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 02/10/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate Will Acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 02/10/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate Will Acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 02/11/21
• “Why the Senate will acquit,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat, 02/12/21
• “Impeachment: Why the Senate will acquit Trump,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Lake Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 02/12/21
• “Senate will acquit Trump in his second impeachment hearing,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sterling Heights, Michigan News-Herald, 02/13/21
• “Senate will acquit Trump in his second impeachment hearing,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dearborn, Michigan Press & Guide, 02/13/21

As the federal government and state governments around the country roll out their COVID-19 vaccination programs, problems real and imagined abound.

The real problems include bottlenecks caused by limited availability, stringent storage requirements, and, most of all, the confusion and scheduling snafus that inevitably accompany large-scale mobilizations of resources.

The imagined problems boil down to belly-aching about how those who “should” be getting the vaccine aren’t getting it as soon as they “should,” and about how people who “shouldn’t” be getting it as soon are “jumping the line.”

At the extreme we hear claims that old “white” people shouldn’t be getting it before people of color for reasons ranging from the former being more at risk to older people having already lived enough and to payback for past institutional racism, the latter two of which are ghoulish. More on the reasonable side of things are complaints that some younger, less at risk, people are getting it before some older, more at risk, people.

Disclosure: I’ve already received my first jab and will go in next week to get my second, but I’m not displacing anyone else. I’m participating in the Phase III clinical trial for a new vaccine that hasn’t been approved yet. You’re welcome.

The biggest real problem is water under the bridge:  Governments always do things more expensively and less efficiently than markets. The Food and Drug Administration held up approval of the first vaccines for unnecessary months, and government inefficiency is almost certainly holding up your shots for unnecessary weeks.

Retrospectively, the best way to handle things would have been to push the state aside and let the market get this thing done quickly and cheaply. But instead of listening to anarchists like me, people just went along to get along yet again and are likely to continue doing so for some time.

We’re stuck with the worst possible way of doing things. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make the best of it.

How DO we make the best of it? If government policies were written in English, we’d look for something like this from President Biden and 50 governors:

“We’re shipping vaccines to hospitals and doctors and pharmacies as fast as we can, and ask them to put as many two-dose courses as they can in as many arms as they can, regardless of age, sex, race, or other considerations, using whatever scheduling and allocation methods they find work best.”

If the vaccines work, every immunized person is one person less likely to catch COVID-19 or pass it on, and puts us one step closer to hopefully achieving herd immunity.

Every vaccination administered is a win, if the goal is to reduce the numbers of cases, reduce the numbers of deaths, and hopefully bring this ugly era to an end.

Every missed opportunity to stick a needle in an arm is a loss on those same criteria.

Let’s stop letting jealousy over the ages, sexes, and races of the arms in question get in the way.

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

• “Better COVID-19 Vaccination Policy: Stick it to’em!” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 02/05/21
• “Better COVID-19 vaccination policy: Stick it to ’em!” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentucky New Era, 02/05/21
• “Better COVID-19 vaccination policy,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hammond, Louisiana Daily Star, 02/08/21
• “Better COVID-19 Vaccination Policy: Stick it to’em!” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 02/12/21
• “Point of View: Better COVID-19 vaccination policy: Stick it to’em!” by Thomas L. Knapp, Palm Beach, Florida Post, 02/24/21