Who We Are As Americans?

Who are we, as Americans? Liberals regularly parrot that arrogant mantra popularized by Obama: "That's not who we are as Americans," or other words to that effect.

Mark Penn has a disturbing answer to that question, Who we are as Americans, or Who we are becoming, in his latest must-read article: Defending the First Amendment, even for Roger Stone. We've written about Judge Amy Berman Jackson's actions before,

Woops!

The Myth Of Equal Protection

The Meaning Of The Roger Stone Indictment

Saul Alinsky, The Arrest Of Roger Stone, And The Uses Of Power

her blatant favoring of Team Mueller against American citizens--actions that should shame us all, as Americans. Authorizing secret police style raids on non-violent defendants, holding such defendants indefinitely in solitary confinement to force their cooperation, gagging defendants while the government leaks at will.

Read the whole thing--it's excellent. Here are a few choice excerpts:


Roger Stone can no longer criticize Judge Amy Berman Jackson, but I sure can. She should be removed from the Stone case without delay for her threats to jail him over mere speech and the extreme prejudice she has expressed against the defendant.

Of course Roger Stone makes ridiculous and often inane pronouncements. He’s Roger Stone. But that’s what the First Amendment is for — holding public officials (or anyone else, for that matter) accountable for their actions and calling them out boldly.

[Stone's public statements that] ... special counsel Robert Mueller has used a technicality to avoid random judge selection and get the same Obama appointee that denied bail to Paul Manafort in a highly unusual move, was core-protected political speech. It’s criticism of the powerful by the powerless.

Judge Jackson’s argument that Stone could prejudice the jury pool, given what’s gone on in this case, is absurd. It’s a lame excuse to insulate the judge from legitimate criticism. The special counsel arrested Roger Stone with guns drawn, amphibious units and bullet-proof vests, as though they were attacking a terrorist compound, not a Florida retirement home with a dog and a deaf wife. And the cameras from CNN were there, in advance, to capture the whole event. It was broadcast around the world. Now, that’s what I would call prejudicial.


...

There are two reasons that Judge Jackson should be removed from the Stone case.

First, the defendant is correct that Mueller did use a technicality to draw this judge — claiming that the Stone and the Manafort cases were parts of the same case. It’s obvious that they are not ...

The second reason is that, in slapping a gag order on Stone, the judge said point-blank and to the world that she did not find him or his apology “credible.” ... She called him a liar in a case about lying. She convicted him right then and there.

... One of Hillary’s IT staffers “lied his ass off,” according to the FBI, and then was granted immunity. Stone was not so lucky, as he rather boldly predicted many times on TV.

For the second time, Judge Jackson has made clear that she views it as her prerogative to jail people for what they say about her and her court. I didn’t know we did that in America ...

The Supreme Court just ruled unanimously [to curb] the ... power by officials to seize property far beyond the crime in a case. I hope the court will rule that the First Amendment that says “Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech” applies equally to federal judges ...