Thread by @jedshug

I encourage everyone to read Bill Barr’s viciously partisan speech to @FedSoc.

Its hackery and intellectual dishonesty is an utter embarrassment to the DOJ, @FedSoc, and to all of us (yes, me, too) who try to be intellectually honest about textualism & original public meaning.

https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1195548823927578625

Attack on the “dangerous” left:
Talk about “incendiary.”
Barr has no capacity for how he is irony/hypocrisy incarnate:

Barr, Merrick Garland says hello.

This is the most nauseating passage so far.
Barr denounces “the Left” as religious zealots.
Look in the mirror, Mr. Kulturkampf.

5/ I guess I accidentally started a thread.
Ok, fine.
The joke in this paragraph is how @FedSoc was founded in large part b/c of the opposite view: the executive branch has become a regulatory monster.
Oh, but now that Trump and Barr in charge, it’s executive power uber alles:

6/
This paragraph shows how ignorant Barr is of the history he is clucking about like a chicken with his head cut off.
Independent agencies did not start w/ the New Deal.
The Republican Senate in 1887 insisted on the first one w/ the ICC. Then the Fed and the FTC in the 1910s.

7/
I think Barr is admitting here that he doesn’t have many real friends.

Maybe that’s the problem.
Barr next will tell a vague story in which those friends say “Sir...” then start crying about Obama and then say they are “going to re-register as Republicans.“

8/ There is so much to say about Barr’s ahistorical spin for the unitary executive and executive absolutism. But I’ll stop here with his conclusion.
He has a funny way of showing how much he is against partisanship, disfiguring passions... and Fascism...

9/ Finally: I have supported @FedSoc from the left.
I won @HarvardFedSoc's 2011 Charles Fried teaching prize.
I participate in @FordhamFedSoc events.
I agree with many @fedsoc-ish positions on non-delegation, Chevron, & modest originalism.

This speech genuinely hurts me.

@FedSoc @HarvardFedSoc @FordhamFedSoc 10/
Barr received a standing ovation before *and* after his manichean partisan screed at @fedsoc National Lawyers Convention.
If you are affiliated with @fedsoc, & if you don't publicly denounce it, you show your true principles about authoritarianism vs. original meaning.