Last week marked the first Republican presidential debate.  Frankly, it was a bit anti-climactic since Donald Trump, who leads all others by about 40%, didn’t appear.  Those of you who are regular readers of these pages know that I’d prefer someone other than Trump as the 2024 Republican candidate, because the four indictments against him, warranted or not, have damaged him beyond repair as a viable candidate.  That said, the rest of the field took the stage in Milwaukee.  The post-debate consensus was that Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Nikki Haley did well.  The donors favored Ramaswamy and DeSantis, with increased contributions.  I don’t know how all this will shake out, but unless Trump decides not to run, which is a long shot, how the others do is academic.  Which brings me to the subject of this week’s exercise.  Exactly what purpose is served by the presence on the stage of Chris Christie?  Christie got in the race for one reason, to bash Donald Trump.  The two once were friendly.  Trump helped Christie get elected Governor in 2009.  I know this because, on Christie’s inauguration day, I was in Sacred Heart Basilica for a pre-inauguration mass when Donald and Melania Trump walked past me down the aisle, causing a nun in front of me to comment, “His hair looks even worse in person.”  Christie later helped Trump in his 2016 election campaign.  The two had a falling out, I guess over Christie’s role, or lack of one in the Trump Administration.  Anyhow, Christie now says of Trump, “A lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader.”  It takes one to know one.  These two really are two of a kind.  Not a leader?  Christie needs to look in his own mirror on that one.  I was at the opening of Christie’s campaign headquarters in 2009, and worked as a campaign volunteer.  Christie’s speech made him sound like the second coming of Ronald Reagan, but it was all talk.  Once elected, Christie couldn’t deliver, and he quickly alienated me.  Understand, I’m a life-long Republican.  If a Republican candidate has turned me off, he’s got a problem.  With Christie, it was “three strikes and he’s out.”  Once elected, Christie made changes to the State employee pension and health care systems that required higher contributions.  This was necessary.  When the judges were ordered to pay more, they sued, citing a provision of the NJ Constitution that prohibited reducing their compensation.  When the judges won in court, Christie went into Trump-like attack mode, complaining, “They [the judges] got one of their own to rule in their favor,” thus declaring one-third of his own government corrupt.  That was strike one.  Then in 2013, while Christie was flying all over the map to support other Republicans, he refused to appear to support conservative Gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli in a winnable Virginia election.  Strike two.  That same year, when Frank Lautenberg finally died, NJ had a special election for Senator.  Now, Republican Steve Lonegan was not going to beat Spartacus Corey Booker in NJ.  But, if you’re Mr. Republican, and a Republican candidate is running in a special election that you engineered in your own State, you should at least mention his name once.  Christie never did.  Strike three.  That being said, Christie is polling all of 2% for the 2024 race.  The liberal media is pushing him, crowing that he now is second to Trump in New Hampshire, with 9%.  A closer look at the numbers reveals that while 17% of Republicans view Christie favorably, a third of Democrats see him as favorable, proving that he’s more popular with them than his own Party.  Clearly, his only appeal is as a Trump basher.  At the debate, Christie was roundly booed when introduced.  Without Trump to kick around, he went after Ramaswamy.  But on substance, Chris Christie offered nothing.  Christie once again mentioned that he was a prosecutor.  To my knowledge, Christie never tried a case as a prosecutor.   In any event, he said the best way to fight violent crime is to have the federal government take over the prosecutions.  He said he would direct each of the U.S. attorneys to “take over the prosecution of violent crime in every one of those cities that are failing to do so.”  This is unworkable, and as a U.S. Attorney Christie should know this.  First, I’m not sure what he proposes is legal.  Not every State case can be tried federally.  The federal courts can prosecute gun offenders under what’s called the Trigger Lock program, and that should be used more often.  However even if legally possible, prosecuting all violent crimes federally is not logistically possible.  There are a total of 14 federal judges in Newark, to serve all the northern counties.  They currently handle about 750 criminal cases a year.  Essex County alone has 17 judges in the Criminal Division, and should have at least 5 more, to resolve more than 15,000 annual criminal Complaints.  Add the violent crime dockets from Bergen, Hudson, Passaic, and Union Counties, and the federal court system would collapse.  Christie’s proposal is downright stupid.  Christie then once again tried to characterize himself as the next Ronald Reagan, noting that “the last Democratic incumbent who was defeated was Jimmy Carter, and he was defeated by a conservative governor from a Blue State who knew how to get results, stood for the truth, who cared about accountability and stood strong and hard against waste.”  To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen, “I knew Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was a great President, and Governor, you’re no Ronald Reagan.”  Apart from his absurd personal comparison, Christie’s political analogy wasn’t even correct.  California is a misbegotten Blue State now, but not when Reagan ran for election.  In fact, in the 10 presidential elections from 1952 to 1988 the Democrats won only one time, in 1964.  So Ronald Reagan was not a Blue State Governor.  It’s clear that the answer to the question.”Why Christie?” is, “because he bashes Donald Trump.”  That’s the only reason why Democrats, and RINO’s are tolerant of Chris Christie at this time.  When he’s longer useful to them he will be consigned to the ash heap of history where he belongs.

As this is written, the wildfires on the island of Maui have destroyed nearly the entire town of Lahaina, have killed at least 114 people, and some 850 people remain missing.  The Hawaiian Islands were formed by fire, and indeed are still in the process of being formed, as a chain of undersea volcanoes has moved its activity from the northwest to the southeast.  Near the center of the chain sits Maui, known as the Valley Isle because it was formed by two volcanoes which spewed lava down each peak to create a valley that connected the two sea mounts into one island.  But enough for the geology.  The west Maui coast is home to most of the big resorts.  Kaanapali to the north, and Kehei and Wailea to the south.  In between these areas was Lahaina.  I say “was” because after the wildfires, Lahaina has all but ceased to exist.  Lahaina began as a whaling town in the 1820’s.  It was the site of most of the better restaurants on the island.  This town of nearly 13,000 residents was almost entirely wiped away by the fires.  Now Hawaii is a very liberal-progressive-woke place.  And of course, its leaders are committed (or is it that they should be committed) to Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden’s suicidal plan to end the use of oil and natural gas.  Once the island burned, the Governor immediately blamed the fires on, wait for it – climate change.  A more accurate assessment would have laid the blame, not on climate change, but on the Greenaholic Left’s climate change mandates.  Betsy McCaughey hit the nail on the head with her New York Post article, Greens Burned Maui.  In it she recounts how zero-carbon extremism made the devastating Maui fires almost inevitable.  You see, the Left’s drive to eliminate fossil fuel use, like all stupid Woke hair-brained schemes, has had some unexpected consequences.  Spurred on by extremist Green eco-nuts like Tom Steyer, at who’s $18 million dollar mansion Joe Biden is currently resting his senile old ass, on yet another vacation, the Biden Administration has made destroying oil and gas companies its primary goal.  The drive to move to “renewable” energy sources has put even more stress on the already teetering electricity producing companies, causing the companies to delay or eliminate maintenance measures such as removing vegetation from near power lines and poles.  It seems the money previously used for such things is now being eaten up by the idiotic green energy projects.  Add to the problem the Green maniacs, who have outlawed fire control measures such as brush clearance and controlled burns for fear of releasing CO2.  “No.  Not that!”  And so it came to pass that when winds brought down power lines the fires raged out of control.  But wait.  If the foregoing has made you angry, hold onto your hat, because you ain’t heard nothing yet.  It’s certainly bad enough that the Green movement’s mandates were the main reason the fires got out of control, but firefighting requires water, and the dedication to Woke idiocy denied the Maui residents the water they needed to mitigate the damage.  As with most tropical isles, water on Maui is a precious commodity.  The West Maui Land company manages the water supply, and the Hawaiian Water Resource Management Agency is responsible for directing water on the island.  When the fires hit Lahaina, local officials made an urgent request that water be diverted to the area to be used to put out the fires.  More than five hours went by, while the fires raged out of control, before the water finally was released.  By then, it was too late.  Was it just poor communication, or the chaos, or just negligence?  No.  It was the Left’s preoccupation with what it likes to call “equity.”  The official in charge of making the decision to divert the water explained that the water couldn’t simply be sent to the area on fire right away because he had to first “consider the impacts on downstream users.”  The Woke imbecile continued, “We can share [water] but it requires true conversations about equity,” because “water is a tool of social justice.”  So Maui officials fiddled for five hours while countless people were burned alive, and while the primary commercial center of Maui was razed to the ground after existing for nearly 200 years, and all in the name of the pagan God of Wokeism, “equity.”  When asked about the lack of water to fight the fires, Hawaii Governor Green offered only that we need to “understand there’s been a great deal of water conflict on Maui for many years.”  And such is the harvest of Woke idiocy, who’s adherents would rather see thousands of human beings burn than waiver from their mindless dedication to so-called environmentalism.  Of course, all this was enough of an insult to the good people of Hawaii, before Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden landed on Maui to make an appearance that his political handlers told him was necessary.  Surprising no one, Old Joe only made things worse.  He must have decided it was a good idea at the scene of a holocaust to open with a joke, so he interrupted his mumbling, incomprehensible speech to point out a dog wearing boots.  Biden quipped that the ground must be hot.  At a place where a thousand souls may have been lost, Biden proceeded to make the event about him, recounting the story of his former wife and daughter being killed in a car accident 50 years ago.  Then, in a town where only one house remains standing,

Joe told a story of a 20 minute electrical fire in his kitchen years ago, when he wasn’t home, and no one was injured, complaining that he almost lost his 1967 Corvette.  It may have been Biden’s stupid comments that motivated people along his motorcade route to chant “F*** Joe Biden” and “Thanks for nothing.”  Journalist H.L. Mencken said, “The people get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”  The Maui disaster is a case in point.  If you elect a president who barely knows he’s alive, and local officials who don’t have the sense to send water to a fire lest they be criticized for being unsympathetic to the mandates of “equity,” you’ve reaped what you’ve sown.  I’d like to think the Left will learn from this travesty, but it won’t.

It is an article of faith that whenever the Left accuses conservatives of doing something that is “a threat to our democracy,” they are doing it themselves, only much worse.  In truth, when a Leftist says “it’s a threat to our democracy,” what they really mean is, it may threaten our Woke Imbecile Democrat rule.  This week Victor David Hanson authored an article detailing the the ten ways that the Left has seized and warped the United States, in the pursuit of its revolution, which threatens to pervert every aspect of American life and culture.  Here are Dr. Hanson’s top ten reasons that the left is pushing America toward the abyss.  1) The Attack On Free Expression.  In schools, in the workplace, anywhere in public really, the Left is stifling free speech.  We used to say, “It’s a free country,” but now we have to think twice about any utterance, lest it run afoul of the campus speech code, or be considered proof of a hostile work environment.  The Left permits only one side to every issue, theirs.  And college students, who once were advised to challenge authority in places of higher education dedicated to the exchange of ideas and opinions, have been transformed into fragile snowflakes who run for the nearest safe haven in the face of the mildest dissent.  2) The Weaponization of Justice.  Friendly Justice Department employees have shielded many a president from close legal scrutiny, but the current Justice Department denizens                prove that “Justice” while a title, does not describe what they do.  Never before has a Justice Department gone out of its way to manufacture criminal charges against the incumbent’s chief rival, while at the same time ignored the blatant corruption of the incumbent.  3) The Attack On The Supreme Court.  The Left once relied on the Court to provide programs it lacked the votes to enact.  Now that the Court is more conservative, that is to say, is two thirds composed of judges, rather than partisans, the Left threatens it with violence and legal action, and denounces it as as illegitimate.  I suppose that makes them law deniers.  4) The Fusion Of  Democrats And The Media.  Yes, journalists have always been rather liberal, but there was a time, not so long ago, when they actually reported the news.  Journalism no longer exists.  The media has become a news management business, trashing Trump and all Republicans constantly with lies, and ignoring or denying truths that might hurt Democrats.  I get the hatred of Trump.  You’re not supposed to pick fights with the people who buy ink by the barrel, and Trump made that his trademark.  The Fake News really is fake, but they don’t like being reminded of it.  The Hell is that they’re killing Trump while protecting a Corrupt Demented Imbecile who’s driving the nation off a cliff.  I also don’t understand their endgame.  See Number 1 above.  The First Amendment that they’re helping the Left to destroy is the only thing that’s protecting their phony baloney multi-million dollar jobs.  If the Left wins, they’re fired, and Chairman Xi will send over somebody wearing a blue Mao suit to read the news for $62.50 a week.  5) The Deconstruction Of The Common Law.  Where to begin?  The Common Law developed from English court decisions going back hundreds of years, was developed from the Mosaic Code, the Commandments which embody the Golden Rule.  The certainty of the application of the law to offenders is the basis of modern society.  Law enforcement permits commerce to thrive and protects citizens from tyranny and vigilante justice.  The Left wants to end all that.  Defund the police.  Let criminals and illegals run amok, without consequences, and society contracts.  The well to do escape.  The cities die.  Jobs disappear.  And the very fabric of society is rent.  No sane person would do this.  6) The Erosion Of The Military.  For all our differences, the one constant used to be a respect for the military, which was considered the one part of the government that worked as designed.  Not anymore.  Our military under Biden worries more about proper pronouns than it does preparedness.  The Leftist insistence on promoting diversity to permit transgender troops is appalling.  The military exists to ensure national security, not easy access to abortions.  7) Sexes.  There used to be only two.  As part of its drive to destroy the family, the Left is hard at work blurring gender lines, encouraging gender changing mutilations, and perverting the minds of children with graphic depictions of deviant sex.  Not so long ago, Democrats told us Joe Camel was a danger to children.  Today, if Joe changed his name to Josephine and put on a drag show, the Left would make it a required part of every curriculum.  8) Race, Not Class.  All racial inequality is now blamed on whiteness.  The Left is promoting the resegregation of campus dorms.  Since affirmative action has failed, they’ve moved on to reparations.  According to the Left, merit, fitness, literacy, and even highways are racist.  9) Debt As A Construct.  For the Left, national debt is meaningless, inflation is caused by greedy corporations, and all private property is up for grabs in the name of social justice.  It’s not a new concept.  They learned it from Karl Marx.  We’d be far better off with Groucho.  10) Universities.  What were centers for thought and investigation are now factories for indoctrination.  Progressives have been coming for our children for 100 years, and they’ve now got them.  Socialist educator John Dewey started kindergartens in America, not to give American kids an extra year of education, but for the stated purpose of getting them away from their parents a year sooner, before the family’s values could be ingrained in them, and thus made harder to destroy.  Dr. Hanson lists all of us who reject Leftist orthodoxy as counterrevolutionaries, clinging to out racist and archaic Bill of Rights.  Wake up.  The Left has been at war with us for years.  Because they believe themselves to be Holy Warriors, they’re convinced that any atrocity they commit is justified.  This explains their preoccupation with Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Most of us might be able to be sent to reeducation camps to be retrained, but as Counterrevolutionary Number One, Trump must be destroyed.  That’s why the people who continually tell us, “no one is above the law” have decided that Trump is beneath the law.  If Dr. Hanson’s story scares you, and it should, tell a friend.

So far, Jack Smith, a/k/a Jack the Knife, has twice indicted Donald Trump.  The first indictment is for classified documents at Mar a Lago.  The second indictment alleges that Trump somehow defrauded the government by believing that he won the 2020 election and saying so.  Mr. Smith was appointed the special prosecutor by AG Merrick Garland because he is uniquely qualified for the job.  Smith was the head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section under Il Duce Obama, where he proved himself to be willing and able to stretch any statute, bend any rule, and ignore or circumvent any constitutional protection to prosecute a politician.  Smith’s proclivity for conducting himself like a rabid dog, rather than as an ethical prosecutor, has gotten him into some trouble over the years.  Smith’s victories in trial courts have sometimes failed to stand up on appeal.  Smith’s prosecution of former Virginia Governor McDonnell and his wife, supposedly for bribery over their acceptance of gifts is a case in point.  There was a conviction in the trial court, but the U.S. Supreme court reversed it 8-0.  In so doing, the Court observed “there is no doubt that this case is distasteful; it may be worse than that.  But our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns.  It is instead with the broader legal implications of the Government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”  The High Court rebuked Smith and warned that “the uncontrolled power of criminal prosecutors is a threat to our separation of powers.” In the end, the McDonnell’s were vindicated, but only after spending $27 million to defend themselves.  Smith unsuccessfully prosecuted former presidential candidate John Edwards for campaign finance violations.  When Senator Bob Menendez crossed Il Duce Obama, it was Smith who unsuccessfully prosecuted Menendez for bribery.  Smith has shown that he has no respect for the concept of attorney-client privilege, being in the habit of piercing the privilege to use attorney-client communications to prosecute defendants.  A Federal District Judge ruled that Smith illegally wiretapped calls between  a former Arizona Congressman he was prosecuting and his attorney.  Smith also used attorney-client communications to obtain the Trump indictments.  Jack the Knife conducts himself more like a racketeer than a prosecutor, by using blatant intimidation techniques in his prosecutions.  In the McDonnell case, he tried to coerce a plea from Bob McDonnell by threatening to indict Mrs. McDonnell if he refused.  He refused, and the wife was indicted.  In the Arizona case, Smith and his team obtained testimony from a cooperating witness by promising the witness $25,000 which they never paid.  In the Trump documents case, an attorney for codefendant Nauta, claims a prosecutor on Mr. Smith’s team threatened that the attorney’s application for a judgeship would be considered more favorably if he and his client turned against Mr. Trump.  The attorney has filed a complaint with the chief U.S. judge in Washington alleging prosecutorial misconduct.  Smith also has repeatedly tried to gag defendants while himself leaking to the media.  Just to keep the tallies straight, as this is written, there are three indictments against Donald Trump, including some 78 criminal counts, which carry aggregate penalties of about 641 years.  The Manhattan case is a joke, turning a legal payment for a non-disclosure agreement into a felony bookkeeping charge, all of which occurred more than five years ago, beyond the statute of limitations.  Whether this prosecution can go forward at all depends on the interpretation of an obscure provision of New York law, which permits extension of the limitation when “the defendant has been out of the State” the entire time.  This provision was intended to permit the prosecution of fugitives beyond the reach of the New York courts.  The argument will have to be that as president, Trump was “out of the State.”  That’s ridiculous, and I expect that the NY Court of Appeals will need to rule on this before any trial can begin.  The documents case, venued in Florida, has more merit, but just a little.  The dispute was between Trump and the National Archives, which has custody over classified documents.  But the law giving custody to the Archives carries no criminal penalty, so Smith had to stretch it into a conspiracy.  The problem with this is that the Presidential Records Act permits former presidents to keep some records, and Smith’s indictment isn’t clear about which particular documents were mishandled.  In a nutshell, this is an indictment that would only be brought against Donald Trump, whom the Establishment has never considered to be a legitimate President of the United States.  There seems to be a Trump exception to every legal protection afforded to criminal defendants in general and former presidents in particular.  Case in point, Trump stored documents for two years in a locked room approved of by the FBI and got indicted.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, possessed classified documents dating to 1979.  He had no right to keep any classified documents.  He stored them in open boxes in his Delaware garage, and in the Penn-Biden Center at UPenn, where they were available to the Chinese nationals who bought and paid for the UPenn boondoggle, that paid Biden $900,000 to do nothing.  He has not, and will not be charged with any offense.  The latest, so-called January 6th indictment is just more Jack Smith sleight of hand.  All the charges involve the allegation that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but lied about it to try to change its result.  Once again, fanciful conspiracies are alleged.  What really happened was that Trump was seeking to have Congressmen and Vice President Pence challenge the election results in several States to permit State Legislatures to evaluate the electoral processes used, and which the Constitution states is the province of the Legislatures.  Democrats have challenged every election they’ve lost since 2000.  Smith turned it into this:  A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government; A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified; and A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.  That last one is a statute enacted after the Civil War to stop the KKK from keeping black voters from casting votes.  Its application to the Trump case is, to say the least, puzzling, and brings to mind the words of the Supreme Court in the McDonnell case, “the uncontrolled power of criminal prosecutors is a threat to our separation of powers.”  Trump relied on legal experts who found fraud and he said so.  Other lawyers disagreed.  Jack Smith has decided which legal opinions were correct, and now seeks to punish Trump for exercising his First Amendment rights.  It’s ironic that Democrats, who have spent so much time blaming Vladimir Putin for Trump’s victory, have adopted Putin’s tactics for dealing with political opponents, who he regularly throws into prison.  I wish I believed Trump could win in 2024, just to be able to see their heads explode.

The summertime used to be the quiet time for politics.  We got a little breather, and the political nonsense didn’t start up again until after Labor Day.  But not this year.  The 2024 presidential campaigns are underway.  Republican candidates are making appearances in early primary States.  Trump remains far ahead.  RFK, Jr. is running against Biden, so Democrat hacks are busy assassinating his character. Maybe that’s a poor choice of words.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden is running his reelection campaign.  Sleepy Joe has a unique campaign strategy which consists of going to the beach in Delaware, lying about the economy, denying he ever heard of his son Hunter, getting lost, falling down, and repeatedly indicting Donald Trump.  So far, Trump has been indicted for making payments to a woman in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement, which isn’t a crime and is barred by the statute of limitations; possessing classified documents, which the Presidential Records Act says is legal, something no ex-president has ever been charged with, and something Biden has done without consequences; and the latest – being a political figure who made a false statement about an election, which is a crime that special prosecutor Jack (The Knife) Smith just made up, despite a little thing called the First Amendment, and the fact that such an offense would send 99 and 44/100ths percent of our elected officials to prison.  Another State indictment is expected in Georgia.  The Biden plan seems to be, if you can’t beat ’em, jail ’em.  The idea is to pile criminal charges on Trump, and have him run for election while under indictment, already convicted of some offense, or preferably from a prison cell.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump is prepared to do just that.  Which brings us to the point of this week’s exercise.  Republicans are complaining about Biden’s weaponization of the justice system, and the two-tiered system, which ignores or minimizes blatant crimes by the Bidens, while persecuting Biden’s foes for things like fake Russian collusion, and things that aren’t crimes, based on novel prosecutorial theories.  Democrats, of course, refuse to acknowledge the obvious special treatment afforded to their own.  Case in point, the curious treatment of Hunter Biden.  Many have criticized the prospective Hunter pleas as a “sweetheart deal.”  Democrats, of course, deny this, as their desire to see justice done is wholly dependent on whether doing it will give them a political advantage.  Being experienced liars, Democrats continue to tell us Hunter got no special treatment, and that he shouldn’t have been prosecuted at all just because he had an addiction.  Let’s examine the facts.  The Hunter Biden prosecution was a long time coming.  The special prosecutor slow-walked the investigation, which had little to do with Hunter being an addict, and much to do with his suspect business activities, which brought in millions of dollars from foreign companies, who hired Hunter to do … well, nobody knows what.  The money came in, it got shifted and sifted through some 20 shell companies, and wound up in bank accounts of Biden family members, generating more than 100 Suspicious Activity Reports.  Meanwhile, Hunter neglected to pay taxes on much of the money, or even to file tax returns for a number of years.  Hey, he was busy.  He also, throughout this period, was distracted by a divorce, an affair with his sister-in-law, an illegitimate child with a stripper, and oh yes, his out of control addictions to alcohol, crack cocaine, and just about any other drug he could get his hands on.  Hunter’s descent is chronicled on the laptop he left in Delaware, in graphic photos and messages detailing debauchery, constant drug use, and misuse of a gun, which wound up in a garbage can.  Now, Democrats are against gun possession, but don’t fret.  Hunter got no special treatment.  His father just sent the Secret Service to get the gun back.  And while all this wholesome activity was going on, Hunter was selling his family name, now known as “The Brand,” to any foreign government interested in buying influence.  And so it came to pass that the special counsel, David Weiss had to do something with Hunter.  He stalled long enough to put Hunter’s 2014 and 2015 tax evasions beyond the statute of limitations, and gave Hunter a deal on two misdemeanor tax charges (no jail), and a diversion program on the gun possession, meaning, stay clean for two years and it gets dismissed.  The phony “legal experts” on MSNBC dutifully said this was not special treatment for a Biden.  Others, more attuned to reality disagreed.  Rapper Ja Rule had  similar gun and tax charges and got 24 months for the gun and 28 months for the taxes.  Another rapper, Kodak Black, got 46 months for the same gun charge on which Hunter got the diversion.  Here in New Jersey, there is a mandatory prison term of 12 to 42 months for gun possession, without the possibility of parole.  Then there’s the case of 2007 Biden donor Chris Tigani.  Hunter Biden asked him for $75,000 to pay for billboards for Joe’s 2008 presidential campaign, and Biden campaign financial director Dennis Toner suggested Tigani structure the payments as coming from his employees.  This turned out to be illegal.  The Obama Justice Department prosecuted Tigani for illegal campaign contributions.  Tigani cooperated, and offered to wear a wire against the Bidens.  The FBI said “No.”  Toner didn’t remember telling Tigani anything, and he got 24 months in prison, from the same David Weiss who’s prosecuting Hunter.  Tell me again how the Bidens don’t get special treatment.  So as for the Hunter plea deal, let me officially call it sweetheart.  Last week, when Hunter went to court to put the sweetheart deal through, the judge in the case refused to accept the pleas.  Democrats howled about a Trump-appointed judge, but now the facts.  What the judge did in temporarily derailing the deal was as much for Hunter’s benefit as for that of the public.  A guilty plea requires a meeting of the minds on both sides.  The government must understand what it is giving and getting, and the defendant must fully understand the consequences of the plea.  If not, no judge can take the plea, and there were some problems here.  Biden was under the impression that the pleas ended all investigations into his conduct.  The government had to admit that’s not true, as he’s still under investigation for other crimes.  The judge asked, “Is there any precedent for such a deal?”  Weiss said, “Uh, no.”  That doomed the deal, and here’s why.  Justice Department plea policy is to have the accused plead to the most serious provable charge.  That wasn’t done here.  The parties disagreed on the terms of the agreement, so you can’t take the pleas.  And most importantly for Hunter, if you’re getting into a diversion program, the program comes with a long list of dos and don’ts, like, do stay off drugs and alcohol.  The biggest don’t is don’t get charged with another crime.  You can’t put Hunter in the program today, and tell the court we may come back next week with a new indictment that will bounce him out of the program.  As a result, the sweetheart deal is on hold, for now.  I’m sure it will be back.  Meanwhile, the same Justice Department is trying to put Trump in prison for 400 years.  Justice may be blind, but she peeks out every now and then to see who’s in front of her.