Democrats embarrass themselves at Barr hearing

Michael Goodwin:

...
Nadler specializes in duds, demanding that former special counsel Robert Mueller testify a year ago, only to see the Russia, Russia, Russia hysteria collapse on national TV. Then Nadler, bearing a lifetime grudge against President Trump, did such a terrible job in the first impeachment hearings on Ukraine that Speaker Nancy Pelosi demoted him and turned the task over to Rep. Adam Schiff.

Yet Nadler is a slow learner and there he was Tuesday, opening the ballyhooed attack on the AG with a statement that was a farrago of lies, fake news and slanderous attacks on law enforcement, Barr and Trump. It was so over-the-top, so fact-free and unsupportable, that it had zero chance of setting the stage for a meaningful interrogation.

Then again, honest interrogation was not the intent. Pelosi’s House only does character ­assassination.

Recently caught on camera calling Antifa violence in Portland a “myth,” Nadler repeated the gist of that. He said Barr had “endangered Americans and violated their constitutional rights by flooding federal law enforcement into the streets of American cities . . . to forcefully and unconstitutionally suppress dissent.”

So hundreds of black-masked Antifa-types using guns, knifes, Molotov cocktails, commercial-grade fireworks, lasers and ­Tasers to attack federal agents on federal property is now called “dissent.” Got it.

After the GOP’s Jim Jordan countered with an attack on the FBI’s spying on Trump’s campaign and played a video of pundits calling the violence in Portland and elsewhere “peaceful protests,” the air had left the room before Barr said a word.

When he got his chance, he didn’t just defend his tenure — he went on offense to demand an end to the “demonizing of police” and the dangerous defunding movement.

The war against law enforcement, he said, is making police “more risk-averse,” and that is part of the reason crime is soaring across America — leading to the deaths of the very people the Black Lives Matter movement says it wants to help.

“The leading cause of death for young black males is homicide,” he said, adding that about 7,500 are murdered each year, 90 percent by other black Americans.
...

It was the first of many times Barr turned the tables on his would-be tormentors. He often appeared bored, but when he was allowed to speak, his words cut through the room like a knife. He called the attacks in Portland and elsewhere “an assault on the government of the United States.”

Later, he chided Nadler & Co. for their silence in the face of clear criminal activity.

“This is the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our two great political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence,” he said. “Can’t we just say the violence against the federal courts has to stop? Could we hear something like that?”
...

Democrats had no real answer to Barr when he asked if they thought it was OK to attack federal courthouses.   No one could are should justify such attacks, yet there they were attacking the defenders of the courthouse.  The Democrat lawyers on the Judiciary panel should be disbarred.