Obstruction of Logic

We’ve now all seen Robert Mueller on TV. I, for one, still haven’t read his report. But I have been thinking about Attorney General Bill Barr’s argument that Trump couldn’t have obstructed justice because there was no underlying crime, or at least not enough evidence of an underlying crime.

I’ve tried to think of a simple example to explain this to myself (keep in mind, I’m not a lawyer, so I have about as much insight into these matters as Rudy Giuliani does.) Here’s the hypothetical I came up with. 

Let's say the police in Bedford Falls have a confidential informant who knows that some guy, Brad, has 3 pounds of heroin under his bed. This CI (or "this rat", as Donald Trump would call him) tells the police, as confidential informants do. The police get a warrant to search Brad's apartment. Brad sees them coming, quickly bars his reinforced steel door, refuses to answer the police’s pounding on it, while his girlfriend, Beverly, flushes the heron down the toilet. Brad successfully prevents the cops from entering the apartment until all traces of the smack are gone. Whew, that was close! 

Voilà! Brad did his damnedest to delay the police searching his apartment, but he didn’t “obstruct justice” because, at the end of the day, the police found no evidence of a crime. No evidence of a crime means no crime, means no justice to obstruct. Perfectly logical, I guess.

Immigration Word Games

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Facebook comment by someone (presumably a Trump supporter) sharing his thoughts on what he wants changed in US immigration policy. He listed four things: The Wall, an end to “chain migration”, an end to the “visa lottery”, and mandatory E-verify. (Notably, no mention of DACA or Dreamers). These four measures, he asserted, would greatly help in “solving the immigration problem”. 

Shortly after posting his comment, he edited it by adding “illegal” to the last part so it read “solving the illegal immigration problem”. In doing so he revealed something: 

1. He must have realized that it’s not politically correct to see legal immigration as a “problem”. American is a nation of immigrants, of course, with the exception of Native Americans. Even most conservatives will take pains to stress they’re not against people coming to the country, as long as they do it legally. 


2. So it’s clear he added the word “illegal” in order to appear that he has no issue with legal immigration itself. He just wants the illegal immigration to stop (or so he would have you believe).


3. But this is false. Two of the items on his wish list, “chain migration” (or to use the proper, and less sloganeering, term "Family-based Immigration") and “visa lottery” (again, officially the "Diversity Visa Program") are currently legal ways of coming to the country. They have nothing to do with illegal immigration. As a side note, Family-based Immigration is probably the reason Amalija and Viktor Knavs (Melania Trump's parents) now call the US home, rather than Slovenia. Just saying. 

The only problem solved by ending those two policies would the “problem” of TOO MUCH legal immigration. Or rather, too much immigration from some countries. 

Obviously, the commenter is a immigration restrictionist, unhappy with the thought of more foreigners coming to America, legally or otherwise. Moreover, he's possibly even a racist, mainly unhappy about dark-skinned foreigners coming to America, since it's hard to imagine what else would engender such strong feelings against legal new arrivals. With that small, last-minute edit, he showed his true colors.  

He was being honest at first, but then decided maybe that was too honest.