Evidently, according to the Department of Homeland Security, I am just such an individual, inasmuch as I am “antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship…and restrictions on firearms ownership and use” and am “mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority”. So much for dissent being the highest form of patriotism, eh?
Despite her impressive legal credentials — J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, clerking for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is apparently unclear on the concept of protected political expression. Somebody ought to provide the poor woman with a clue. I hear that her boss was a professor of constitutional law; maybe he could be of some help.
For those of us with longer memories, this is nothing new. The last Democratic administration was notorious for portraying political opponents as foaming-at-the-mouth radicals (remember liberals blaming conservative political leaders and radio talk-show hosts for the Oklahoma City bombings, and Hillary Clinton famously complaining that her husband’s ongoing legal difficulties were the product of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”). Attempting to delegitimize their political opponents is what they do; it is who they are.
Though the spluttering outrage with which much of the dextrosphere has reacted to this nonsense is wholly justified, I think I prefer Legal Insurrection’s more bemused take: “Only in a highly politicized bureaucracy could the Constitution be viewed as a subversive manifesto.”
Comments are closed.