“You deserve to know”

Refusing to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

His Majesty gave this a big “Meh.” Enacting a swarm of laws, then selectively enforcing them, has been the chosen means of imposing tyranny while maintaining a pretense of rule of law for a long time.

If an administration wants to intimidate anyone, do they “make them disappear”? No, that’s too crude and inelegant. You sic the IRS on them instead, on the reasonable assumption that if they have any wealth at all, they’ve probably violated a tax regulation somewhere. That this is almost always done unintentionally, and thus does not satisfy the traditional mens rea required for criminal guilt in Anglo-Saxon law, is irrelevant when you campaign as a Progressive skeptical of tradition.

The Obama administration has gone a step further, though, reviving a technique used with much success by Hermann Goering when he was appointed chief of the Prussian police, in the brief period when the Nazis shared power. He saw to it that anti-rioting laws were strictly enforced against the Communists, but Nazi thugs were never charged with violating them. So maybe Obama has more respect for tradition than I’ve been giving him credit for.