The Founders, according to Barr, believed that national success depended on America remaining a pious Christian nation, in which the worst inclinations of the citizenry would be constrained by obedience to God-given eternal values.
And second, a nation with a President that is free of any inconvenient checks and balances.
Barr writes that the president “alone is the Executive Branch,” possessing literally “all Federal law enforcement power, and hence prosecutorial discretion.” That includes, Barr is perfectly clear, “supervisory authority over [all] cases,” including the right to direct the handling of cases involving himself, his friends, or his enemies.
In his speech to the Federalist Society, Barr goes beyond this vision of total and illimitable executive power to consider the president’s authority and standing in relation to the other branches of the federal government.And here, as he did in expressing his views on religion, Barr offers up a fictional version of the Founders’ vision with regard to the place of executive power.
Barr begins by deriding “the grammar-school civics-class version” of our history, under which the Founders created a complex structure of checks and balances, to forestall the risk that any one part of government might develop tyrannical powers. Among the risks of important concern to them, most of us have thought, is the risk of tyrannical power in the president. And, indeed, the numerous checks the Constitution created to limit the president’s authority—the impeachment power, the House appropriation power, Congress’s power to override vetoes, the need for a congressional declaration of war, and the Senate power to advise and consent, for example—seem to show that unchecked presidential power was prominent among their concerns.
You see, despite what it says in the Declaration of Independence, Barr feels that we've been wrong for the last couple centuries or so and that the founders were not concerned about the excesses of King George III. What they were really worried about was that the English Parliament had gained too much power in relation to the monarchy. He thinks that what we should be worried about now is that Congress and the courts are getting too strong and that the President should have absolute authority over the other branches of government.
Think about that when you consider that Barr wants Trump back in office. Trump's efforts to overturn democracy are not an issue for Barr, they are a selling point.
You're not wrong, however, this article is about stuff he's been saying for decades now. It's not just something he's been saying lately. Barr must see Trump as a possible step on the path towards a Christianity focused unitary executive government.
I am still baffled that the media went on for so long building up the anticipation for the Mueller report, and then when it was released, they just accepted the word of Bill Barr - the guy who was specifically hired to quash the report. Unreal.
It's not that baffling, corpo media needs engagement for ratings, and hyping up the report was good for ratings. When it then turns out the report said exactly what everyone said it was, that's not that engaging for 30-50% of the country and would actively push away the trump rubes and radical centrists.
