(03-15-2022 10:09 AM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:
Article on Romney's fascist tendencies:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/romneys...abbard?s=w
"...On Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) considerably escalated the attacks on Gabbard's patriotism. In a mega-viral tweet, the four-time-draft-dodging, son-of-a-rich-politician, investment-banker Republican — who skipped the Vietnam War after protesting in favor of it, opting instead to send other Americans to fight and die, and then justified the fact that all five of his sons avoided military service on the grounds that helping him get elected was their "service” — accused the life-long Army officer and Iraq War veteran of being a traitor:
Twitter avatar for @MittRomney
Mitt Romney
@MittRomney
Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.
March 13th 2022
13,687 Retweets64,771 Likes
Romney's endorsement of this “treason" accusation seemed to have given the green light to liberals to reveal their true authoritarian selves in all of their grotesque, naked darkness. On Monday, the hosts of ABC’s The View, led by Ana Navarro, demanded that Gabbard and Carlson be criminally investigated by the DOJ over their views about the war in Ukraine (on Twitter, Navarro reaffirmed her call for a criminal investigation of the pair, arguing that “persons engaged in domestic political or advocacy work on behalf of foreign principals” are engaged in a crime absent FARA disclosures: an odd view for someone whose career began by pressuring the U.S. Congress to fund and support Nicaragua's death squads used by the contras — of which her father was a member). The discredited-and-fired former FBI agent Peter Strzok suggested that the two were involved in some form of sinister “coordination.” The founding father of the current iteration of MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, went a step further and argued that the duo should be militarily detained and given a trial only if they are lucky and the U.S. decides to be generous. People across the spectrum, including the most banal liberal YouTube hosts, cheered Romney's deranged "treason” accusation against Gabbard.
Romney's accusation that Lt. Col. Gabbard is guilty of treason is repugnant and false for numerous reasons. First, as the vehemently anti-Trump constitutional law site Just Security explained in 2017 as it became increasingly acceptable to call Trump a "traitor” over his alleged ties to Russia, the Constitution confines "treason” to aiding and abetting an actual, declared “enemy” of the U.S., a term which Russia — for reasoning that applied then and now — does not come close to meeting (emphasis added):
Whatever one thinks of Russia, Vladimir Putin, or the current state of relations between it/them and the United States, we are not at war with Russia. Full stop. Russia is therefore not an “enemy” of the United States. Full stop. Collaborating with Russia is a serious allegation, and may violate other federal laws. But treason is something very special, unique, and specific under U.S. law–and, as my friend and UC-Davis Professor Carlton Larsen has long explained, for good reason. Let’s keep it that way.
In an article the following day, responding to their disappointed critics who wanted desperately to call Trump a "traitor," that site's constitutional law scholar Steve Vladeck explained how narrow of a term “treason” is due to judicial rulings applying its scope. Among other things, a country cannot be deemed to be at “War” with the U.S. or an “enemy” of it absent a Congressional declaration of war against it, which — thankfully — does not exist for Russia:...."