The best and only safe road to honor, glory, and true dignity is justice. – George Washington, September 30, 1779

By Glen Reaux

Justice, today in America is a far cry from the intentions and understandings of the founding fathers.  Justice to them was just that, just behavior or treatment of citizens by the government.  Justice in their era was a form of social consciousness that was to be exhibited and enforced by the government through a set of laws inspired by the spirit of humanity.  They believed that qualities like honor, glory and true dignity were endemic and necessary in the people that write the laws and administer justice.  These characteristics are hard to find in many of today’s politicians.  Consequentially, this best and safe road is nearly impossible to find today.  Due to these circumstances, in truth, American justice is terrifyingly real.

Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, on the internet, television, radio and in print media we are bombarded with stories and images of American justice.  When thinking of justice, most people relate to court cases and criminal investigations dealing with murder, corporate fraud, political corruption, organized crime, robberies, white-collar crime and since the late 20^th century, civil rights violations.

Other forms of America justice involve White police officers killing unarmed African-American men.  These incidents are so widely reported that the populace has become inoculated against the terror of these murders.  The justice from the judicial outcomes produced from these atrocities is nearly nonexistent.  Even more frightening forms of law enforcement have been displayed by the use of military armored personnel carriers and tank-styled vehicles used to disperse crowds of unarmed protesters in Ferguson Missouri on April 9, 2014 and in other American cities.  Just as insidious is the fact that many prisons are substandard, privately owned, government funded and run by corporations without any government oversight. This type of justice is so commonplace that emotionally, people have become numbed to the point where their outrage no longer exists.  Without outrage on a national level that is properly guided, justice on any level is unachievable.  Factually, it is safe to say “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Aside from law enforcement, a terrifying fact of American justice stems from the knowledge that justice in America is determined by who you know or by a defendant’s ability to buy justice.  Consequently, American prisons are overcrowded with poor people that cannot afford a high-priced lawyer.  While, many upper-middle-class people, wealthy elites and corporations get away with committing crimes because of their wealth or social status.  These are well-documented facts.  Sadly, these atrocities are only symptoms of far greater and more terrifying crimes committed against the people.

The terrifyingly reality of American justice has not been well documented by today’s news media.  It is a very complicated issue that has as many layers as an onion.  The work is unpleasant and very hard to explain.  Much like the act of peeling an onion, the tears start to flow as the layers are peeled away making the truth very hard to get at.  People who accomplish this arduous task and speak of their findings are often labeled crazy, paranoid and even delusional because the truth that they find, to others is too monumental to fathom and terrifying to look at.

Mistakenly, the American people seem to think that justice is a matter only for the courts.  It is this misnomer that has resulted in a lack of justice for the victims of mass shooting and other preventable atrocities.  The justice system has caught, tried, convicted and executed many mass murderers.  On the surface, it may appear as though justice has prevailed.  But, to the survivors of these events and the families of the victims, it has not.  True justice does not lie in the hands of the courts but in the hands of the legislators and executives of our government.  This by no means exonerates the judiciary from their hideous role or of any blame.  The judiciary is a symptom and not the cause of the failure of justice.  The roots of the problem grow from deep within the heart of the government.  The Congress consist of people who decide whether or not to make laws that can protect us from mass shootings and other things that impact our very existence and that of our descendants.  The Executive Branch led by the President is responsible for the enforcement of those laws.  Shockingly, the manner in which both of these branches of government have functioned can only be described in one word, criminal.  And, criminals produce illegal, immoral and terrifying outcomes as evidenced by their behavior.

One of the responsibilities of the Congress is to enact laws to ensure the public safety.  This safety extends to children in schools across the country.  In this respect, Congress has failed miserably.  Defined by the FBI, an active shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.  Between the years 2,000 and 2017, the United States has suffered 250 active shooter events, according to FBI statistics¹.  These shooting accounted for 2,217 casualties.  The FBI data also shows that 20% or 50 of these shootings occurred in schools, grades pre-K through 12.  This is an outrageous amount of violence and danger that children supposedly in safe environments have been exposed to.

Upon further research, a Wikipedia article provides a listing of school shooting that go as far back as the 1800s.  This list includes shootings at private schools, colleges and K -12.  It also includes incidents on school buses.  According to this list², there have been 235 school shootings from 2000-2018.  This list provides very accurate documentation for each incident.  Although Wikipedia is not a government agency, the large degree of difference between the two lists does require scrutiny.   Whether the number of school shootings is 50 or 235, the point is federal government legislation and enforcement as a deterrent is needed.  Not to do so is a crime in any parent or grandparent’s book.   The gun reform movement has been defeated at every turn by special interests led by the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Their financial contributions to politicians both Republican and Democrat have prevented gun reform.  Laws requiring background checks, a ban on assault rifles, and a mandatory age requirement of 21 to purchase firearms would have prevented many of these shootings and saved hundreds of lives. Whatever the reason is for Congress not to pass the needed legislation to protect our children at school, it is not justified.  The lack of such legislation is criminal in nature at the very least, if not by design.

The constitution of the U.S. has established the Congress and the executive branches as coequal branches of government.  As a guard against abuse of power, the Congress has oversight responsibility.  This responsibility includes approval of Presidential appointees to certain cabinet positions, the Supreme Court and all federal courts.  By constitutional design, these appointments are lifetime appointments.  These judges are supposed to be appointed due to their qualifications. They are not supposed to be pawns of dark money, special interest, partisan loyalties or of conservative or liberal ideologies.  Through the actions and decisions rendered by these federal judges and Supreme Court Justices our nation should travel down “the road to honor, glory and true dignity.”

Once an appointment is made by the President, the Senate is responsible for the screening, due diligence and approval of Federal Judges and Supreme Court Justices.  This is a part of the constitutional checks and balances duties of the Senate.  It is a safeguard against possible dictatorships.  But, since the middle 20^th century, factors such as partisanship, special interest and dark money have corrupted the process.  These factors have weighed heavily upon Republicans and Democrats.  They are factors that are responsible for the corruption of the judiciary.  When Republicans are in power, the so-called conservatives only appoint Republican judges that will render decisions that are supportive of their agendas.  A recent example is the 2013 Supreme Court ruling on Shelby County Alabama v Eric Holder Attorney General³.  The court overruled two key provisions that protected citizens, from states that use racist policies to deny ethnic minorities their rights to vote.  This decision was a 5-4 partisan vote with Republicans outvoting Democrats.  Prior to taking office, Donald Trump stated that he would only appoint Supreme Court Justices that would overturn a prior Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade.  This is a landmark 1973 decision giving women the right to have an abortion.  He has since appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom are antiabortion advocates.  Despite credible evidence that Kavanaugh is an attempted rapist, he was approved to the highest court in the land, also by a purely partisan, Republican majority.  As of January 2019, Trump has appointed an additional 83 judges to the federal appeals courts and district courts, all of whom are conservative Republicans.  All of these appointments are for the duration of their lives. These appointments literally hold the fate of your lives in their hands. There are few things more terrifying than this form of American justice.  However, an American President without any checks and balances and acting as an agent for a foreign power is far more terrifying.  These are abuses of the system and terrors that the founding fathers could have never imagined.

The Constitution of the United States grants the Executive Branch of government very specific powers while charging it with very well defined responsibilities.  The President takes an oath to uphold and defend the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. This means that, one of his principal duties is to enforce the laws passed by Congress and abide by the current laws.  The law enforcement arm of the Executive Branch is headed by a Presidential appointee who is also approved by the Senate, the Attorney General.  The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the country.  His duties encompass the management of all of the federal policing agencies and all attorneys that represent the United States in civil and criminal cases.  Once laws are passed, this division becomes the heart of enforcement.  And, according to the founding fathers, the Attorney General and the President have to employ honor, glory and true dignity in the performance of their duties.  During the Trump administration, neither the President nor either of his appointees has exhibited these qualities.  The Executive Branch is also the management branch of the government.  “When management is top-down, justice is top-down.  It would be senseless to expect anything different.“  The results of the behaviors and mismanagement of the President and his appointees have caused a constitutional crisis.

Under the two years of Donald Trump’s administration, the Attorney General’s office has been occupied by Jeff Sessions and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.  During Senate confirmation hearings, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to the Senate about meetings with the Ambassador of Russia.  Lying to the Senate about meeting with a foreign ambassador is illegal and should have disqualified him from taking the office.  But, via a partisan vote, Republican Senators approved his appointment.  His successor, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, at the time that he took office was under investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspectors office for possible participation in a scam that bilked investors and customers out of millions of dollars.  Whitaker was a paid Advisory Board Member and marketing presenter for the Florida based company.  Trump’s new appointee for the Attorney General position has refused to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation into the President’s possible collusion with Russia.  He has also refused to release the entire, unedited investigation report to Congress.  He has further refused to release the findings to the American people.  The Justice Department which is a part of the Executive Branch has a standing policy that it will not indict a sitting president.  This standing Justice Department policy is just that, a policy that is a conflict of interest and not a law.  According to our “rule of law” a person cannot be criminally prosecuted without an indictment.  This effectively makes the president above the law.  This is not the American justice that our founding fathers intended.  Also, this type of injustice is not tolerated by any other democracy in the world.

President Donald Trump is the most controversial president in American History.  His abuses of power are well documented in the media.  But, he has committed illegal actions that have not been exposed as such by the media.  The Posse Comitatus Act was signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.  The law reads:

Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Basically, the law prohibits the President from using the military to enforce U.S. laws or domestic policies established by a presidential administration. The original law was specific to the army but it was amended in to include the Air Force.  The Navy and the Marine Corp have also subscribed to the act.  The U. S. Coast Guard which operates under the Department of Homeland Security is the only military branch that is exempt from the law.  President Trump violated this law when in October of 2018 he ordered 5,200 active duty military troops to the southern border to enforce his immigration policy.  On February 3, 2019 the President again violated the law by ordering an additional 2,000 troops to the U.S. Mexico border.  Another injustice often committed by sitting Presidents is when a President refuses to enforce a law that he does not agree with.  Or, the President withholds funds allocated by Congress for the enforcement of certain laws.  This is a violation of the President’s oath of office to uphold and defend the constitution.

Other Presidents have also violated the law without criminal prosecution or impeachment.  On August 9, 1974 Republican President Richard Nixon resigned from office rather face impeachment for the Watergate Burglary of the Washington Democratic Office, which he masterminded.  Immediately upon taking office as President, Gerald Ford, Nixon’s vice president pardoned him for all crimes that he committed and future crimes that may have been discovered.  In March of 1987, Ronald Reagan admitted to the country in a national broadcast that he broke the law; “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”  This was Reagan’s admission that throughout his entire Presidency, he had been a felon, but believed that in his heart, he was above the law.  The Iran Contra Affair led to the indictment of Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, his National Security Adviser, the Assistant Secretary of State and at least five other Reagan administration officials.  Reagan got away scot-free.  In October of 2002, George W. Bush broke the law when he lied to Congress about Iran possessing chemical and biological weapons and was taking active measures to acquire and or develop nuclear weapons.  All of these actions by current and former presidents are criminal.  None of these presidents were prosecuted nor will they ever face prosecution for these crimes.  The American people will never receive the justice it is due.

American Justice begins at the ballot box, moves to the Congress, is managed by the Executive Branch, enforced by the Justice Department and is decided by the Judiciary.  From start to finish, it is partisan, beset upon by special-interest and dark money, ripe with corruption, biased, infested with criminal activity, favors the elite and is Terrifyingly Real.  But, you can change it!

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Linked Sources and Documentation

1. FBI – https://www.fbi.gov/about/partnerships/office-of-partner-engagement/active-shooter-incidents-graphics
2. Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#21st_century
3. Shelby County Alabama v Eric Holder Attorney General

American Justice Terrifyingly Real Part II Tyranny