Anyone surprised by the ‘Rogue Mob’ at U.S. Capitol obviously doesn’t live in Kentucky
The language used in prisons changes and evolves over time but back when Clinton, the boy one, was triangulating and Democrats and Republicans made their last agreement on anything, which was to overstuff prisons, there was a term inside the joint that I always liked, and they may still use it. When inmates were sitting around comparing their crimes, the segment in there for dishonest crimes, not violent ones but stuff like stealing, bad checks, or scamming called their art “rogueing.”
If Don John is to be remembered for anything positive, it might well be the reversal of some of the uncivilized laws that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton, so people would like them more, and so Clinton could stand for at least something, got with enthused Republicans and foisted on the population. One advantage of electing a crook, a “rogueing” one, for President is that they are generally more considerate of other crooks. Trump has caused the release of hundreds who should never have been locked up in the first place.
The big question for that guy from Louisville whose wife quit Trump — which should have occurred after that first Cabinet meeting 8 years ago when Trump went around the room and his Secretaries took turns destroying their own dignity by acting like clappers at a North Korean rally and wondering aloud at their good fortune in being able to serve a stable genius– the big question is whether to permanently stop the President of the United States from ever rogueing again. Like his wife, Senator McConnell was too-late anti-rogue but it is not too late for him to assure that the First Rogue will not be a candidate rogue again.
Anybody who was surprised by the Rogue Mob obviously does not live in Kentucky, where authoritarianism will be the new thing if the leadership of the state can spell it. In order to cancel an election, the legislature is hurrying through the Jealousy Act, legislation which vests most of the power of the governor in the priesthood, allows the attorney general to really be the governor if need be, names Fox News as the official state historian, and lets people go down to the local Courthouse and sue the state. That latter provision is because Democrats don’t make good judges. They are not Scalia enough. That is a reference to the right wing judge and intellectual idol worshiped for his scholarship and who believed that there is a literal Devil. The Devil you say!
The judicial system of Kentucky or at least our end of it has been rocked by the suicides of at least four of us lawyers, and these were young men and good lawyers. Damn those billboards; damn those ads; damn clients who think they deserve to be happy; damn those who do not have to obey the law; damn judges to whom everything that is not prohibited is mandatory; damn guns for being too available. Damn us all.
Larry Webster is a Pikeville attorney.