Don Pesci: In the thug competition, Trump is no Andrew Jackson

VERNON, Conn.

"We're careening, literally, toward a constitutional crisis. And he's [Judge Neil Gorsuch] been nominated by a president who has repeatedly and relentlessly attacked the American judiciary on three separate occasions, their credibility and trust is in question" --  U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal on CNN

President Trump is irascible and prone to childish fits of personal outrage, but his dealings with the judiciary are not quite as bloodcurdling as those of President Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party.
 

Following the Battle of New Orleans, which he won, lofting him into celebrity status, Jackson declared martial law. A prominent Louisiana state legislator, Louis Louaillier, vented his displeasure anonymously in the Louisiana Courier. Discovering the identity of the author, Jackson had Louaillier arrested. When his lawyer applied for a writ of habeas corpus, an outraged federal district judge, Dominick Augustin Hall,  signed the writ, further inflaming Jackson, who ordered his troops to arrest Hall. The judge was hustled off to the pokey and placed in Louaillier’s cell, where no doubt they commiserated with each other. Yet another judge, Joshua Lewis, issued a writ of habeas corpus demanding Hall’s release. 

Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review, “As night follows day, Jackson had Lewis arrested, too. The plenipotent general then had five soldiers escort Judge Hall out of town, marching him four miles upriver.”

The judge was lucky that he was not hanged on the first oak tree available upon his release, the punishment that President Jackson threatened to inflict on John C. Calhoun for having defied one of his orders.

The question whether the Supreme Court was constitutionally authorized to declare state laws unconstitutional was much debated during Jackson’s time. Jefferson’s view was that the court had no such power; his comrade in arms, James Madison, argued that it did. Jackson wavered between the two disputants, adopting each view to accommodate his own policies.

When  Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that the state of Georgia could not unconstitutionally seize Cherokee lands on which gold had been found because such laws violated federal treaties, Jackson is reputed to have said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." Jackson’s retort may be apocryphal, but it typifies his cruel arrogance. Commenting on the case, Jackson wrote in a letter to John Coffee, "...the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still-born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate.”

Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story thought that Marshall’s decision in Worcester might have been an attempt to mitigate Marshall’s earlier opinions in Fletcher and Johnson, which had been deployed by Georgia to justify the seizure of Cherokee lands. “Thanks be to God,” Story wrote to his wife in 1832, “the Court can wash their hands clean of the iniquity of oppressing the Indians and disregarding their rights.

Worcester provided the juridical backbone for future treatment of Indian tribes as independent nations subject to treaties conducted by federal agencies rather than states, but because Marshall did not ask federal marshals to enforce his decision in Worcester, Jackson proceeded with Cherokee removal. Jackson’s forced relocation of the Cherokees and other tribes from their native land led to the “Trail of Tears,” which closely followed the “Indian Removal Act” passed by Congress, in 1830.

While intemperate, Trump’s ill-conceived remark concerning a judge whose decision postponed a presidential measure that is constitutional and clearly authorized by statute does not signal a threat to constitutional order. Trump, now redrafting his order, had not jailed the judge or threatened to hang him from an oak tree.; nor has he threatened to disregard a Supreme Court decision, as had Jackson.  

In an interview following his presidency, Jackson expressed regret that he hadn’t shot Henry Clay, one of his more vocal political opponents. Though Trump did say during his primary campaign that he could probably shoot someone on Main Street and get away with it, this was press-baiting, an art that rump has perfected during his years in the media floodlights. 

During his 20 years as attorney general in Connecticut, Blumenthal was no stranger to hyperbole. It has often been said of him “There is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut than the space between Blumenthal and a TV camera.” Blumenthal – though he does not have the military record of a Jackson – lusts after media attention, knowing that notoriety is one among many tickets to election, and here he is in competition with two masterful media manipulators – Jackson and Trump.

Just as Trump is no Jackson, so it must be said of Blumenthal – he is no Trump. Following Blumenthal’s hysterical notion that Trump’s comments on judges amounted to a constitutional crisis, Trump questioned whether anyone should take seriously the word of a man who had several times claimed he had served as a marine in Vietnam when in fact, having exhausted his deferments, Blumenthal served in Washington, D.C., delivering Toys to Tots and ingratiating himself with The  Washington Post.

Since Blumenthal is not a judge but a senator in need of smelling salts, the remarks cannot be said to have triggered a constitutional crisis. 

Don Pesci (donpesci@att.net) isa political writer who lives in Vernon, Conn.

Don Pesci: The Democrats' star slavers dinner

In case anyone has not noticed, we are in the midst of a Nietzschean transvaluation of all values epoch.  Last week, the U.S.  Supreme Court raised the roof on marriage to accommodate gays, striking down with one bold stroke state laws governing marriage that the justices and the editorial board of the New York Times thought primitive and unnecessary.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, WFSB reported, “called the decision historic and had a LGBT pride flag flying at the Governor's Residence in Hartford on Friday. ‘This is a historic moment, and we should recognize and celebrate its significance. Equality, freedom, justice and liberty – all recognized by the Supreme Court in this ruling that moves our nation forward,’ Mr. Malloy said.” His administration, Mr. Malloy has said previously, is the gayest in state history and has been full of historic moments.

“Well, Scott Walker, if you believe the next president’s job is to encourage bigotry and to treat some families better than others, then I believe it’s our job to make sure you aren’t president. That’s just a taste of the ugly picture of Republican leadership,” said progressive flamethrower U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, during the Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey dinner at the Connecticut Convention Center.

Ms. Warren disappointed progressives when she refused to enter the primaries as an alternative candidate to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Some progressives, Connecticut’s own Bill Curry among them, think that Mrs. Clinton is a middle-of-the-road Democrat of no strong principles who, once in office, will surrender to the blandishments of non-progressive Democrats.

In addition, she seems pox-marked with various scandals she may not be able to overcome. The loss of the bully pulpit after eight years of autocratic rule by progressive President  Obama would amount to a revision of values that would put a serious dent in the good humor of progressives as displayed by Ms. Warren in what might have been a thumping presidential stump speech. Scott Walker, she says twice elected governor of Wisconsin, is a bigot; Jeb Bush wants to privatize Social Security; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wants to repeal Obamacare and provide tax breaks for Big Business; and former President  Reagan’s trickle-down economics was “nothing more than political cover for helping the rich and helping the rich become more powerful.”

That sort of bumper-sticker thought went smoothly down the throats of the 1,300 Democrats in attendance who purchased tickets beginning at the non-proletarian price of $185 to hear Ms. Warren spank the behinds of Republican presidential candidates. Not a serious candidate for president herself, Ms. Warren is under no compunction to lay out a domestic and foreign policy program that might garner a sufficient number of votes to propel her into the White House; this is the unhappy lot of Mrs. Clinton, whose candidacy Mrs. Warren has not yet fulsomely endorsed. However, progressive Friends Of Warren (FOWs) here in Connecticut, among them uber-progressive Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, have thrown in their lot with Mrs. Clinton and her scallywag but loveable husband.

Ms. Warren’s appearance at Connecticut’s Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey fundraising dinner was rich in irony. The event itself is named after two slavers and an Indian killer; Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party, was both a slaver and an Indian killer. John Bailey, the last Democratic Party boss in Connecticut, was innocent of these crimes against humanity, and he was an upstanding Democrat too, though politically he was not as ferocious a progressive as Ms. Warren.

On  slavery, Jefferson was somewhat torn. Unlike George Washington, he did not liberate his slaves in his will; he thought blacks were primitive and therefore unworthy of full manumission. Both Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Jackson breeded slaves for private gain. Of the two, Mr. Jackson was less conscience-stricken by what the founders called our “peculiar institution.”

Not only did Mr. Jackson own hundreds of slaves, he vigorously prohibited abolitionists from distributing tracts condemning slavery, tabled abolitionist activity in Congress and was himself a slave trader, according to a piece in Salon.

But it was as an Indian killer That Mr. Jackson excelled. T.D. Allman argues in “Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State” that brutality was a habit of mind for Mr. Jackson long before he prepared the ground as President for the Trail of Tears, the forced death march that killed 4,000 Cherokees in 1838-39.

Slaving and Indian resettlement were not unrelated in that brutal mind. As early as 1816, then-U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson displaced Spanish-speaking black and Choctaw Indian in Florida because he feared that a free black community nearby might serve as a magnet for runaway slaves. Mr. Jackson convinced his subordinates that the blacks and Indians, free under Spanish rule, were bent on “rapine and plunder,” when in fact they were small farmers raising crops.

The news that there is a move underfoot across the nation to re-title all Jefferson Jackson dinners trickled down late to Connecticut. Blue Virginia may already have gone Jacksonless by the time this column appears in print. As a progressive, Ms. Warren’s conscience is exquisitely tender, which is why she called the inoffensive Mr. Walker a bigot. How a woman of such refined feelings could bring herself to participate in a function that honors both herself and Mr. Jackson, a slaver and Indian killer, is a deep puzzlement. Following Ms. Warren’s appearance, The Democratic Party in Connecticut belatedly scrubbed the names of both Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Jackson from their annual fund appeal dinner.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based political writer.

Chris Powell: Stop honoring the genocidal Andrew Jackson

  Manchester, Conn.

Congratulations to Connecticut's Democratic Party for landing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as keynote speaker for the party's annual Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey fundraising dinner in June. Unlike the party's presumptive next presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, Warren at least poses as the scourge of Wall Street, though conveniently for Wall Street she also opposes auditing its great enabler, the Federal Reserve.

But another big irony in Warren's appearance should be addressed too. That is, many years ago, possibly to obtain ethnic hiring preferences, Warren claimed Cherokee Indian ancestry, and the “Jackson” of the dinner is President Andrew Jackson, perpetrator of a disgrace of the country's history, the genocide of the Cherokee Indians, the expropriation of their land in the southeastern part of the country, though they were living at peace with their neighbors, and their deadly forced march to wastelands beyond the Mississippi River.

In part because of that disgrace, there is a growing movement to replace Jackson's portrait on the 20-dollar bill with the portrait of a woman, women being unrepresented on U.S. paper currency. The best candidate seems to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the great advocate of human rights, politically incorrect in her time but vindicated by history.

So why keep honoring Jackson at the Connecticut Democratic Party's biggest event? Eleanor Roosevelt's husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest Democratic president, did far more for the country than Jackson did and could ably replace him as a dinner honoree. (While Roosevelt's internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent during World War II was a disgrace too, at least nobody died from it and it was a consequence of war.)

Like the Democratic Party's subservience to Wall Street, Andrew Jackson has become just a bad habit. It would be good if Warren could persuade the party to dump both. At least dumping Jackson won't cost the party any campaign contributions.

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As he seems about to be sent to prison a second time for political corruption, former Gov. John G. Rowland is becoming an ever-easier target for any grievance involving his 9½ years in office, and now the state employee unions are claiming a great if bitter triumph over him in the settlement of their federal lawsuit challenging what turned out to be Rowland's temporary layoff of 2,500 union members amid state budget difficulties in 2003.

The unions call Rowland's action a great crime. But the lawsuit got to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, where the unions won, only because the state had prevailed at the federal district court level, so it's not as if the state had no case. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court might have gone either way, and the unions figured, as did Gov. Dannel  Malloy and Atty. Gen. George Jepsen, that the parties would do best to settle rather than go for broke.

While the nominal value of the settlement is said to be $100 million, the attorney general says it has been structured so that most of the money will be paid to the state employees over many years as vacation and personal days off and thus not require special appropriations.

The unions say the settlement's structure demonstrates their generosity amid state government's latest budget difficulties under an infinitely friendlier governor. But the structure seems more like an admission that state employees are not much missed when they don't show up for work, as they didn't show up a few weeks ago on Good Friday, one of their already innumerable paid holidays, which closely followed Martin Luther King Day in January and Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday in February.

If, as the unions' posturing suggests, state employees spent those days mostly steaming about their oppression, they'll be able to do it again in October on Columbus Day, when, for some reason, Connecticut will honor the destroyer of the Indians of the Caribbean.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, based in Manchester, Conn.