Vain, Wrong, and, Dangerous. But at Least His Grammar is Awful.

One might say that Ed Martin is a gift that keeps on giving, or at least that he can be relied upon to serve as the entertainment between episodes of terrible behavior at Main Justice, were it not for the fact that he currently serves as a federal law enforcement official. That somehow takes the joke out of things, leaving me to wonder what you call something that is ridiculous without being at all funny. Outrageous, I guess, in the sense that it evokes outrage in decent people. Or perhaps horrifying. 

I think a government that not only steeps itself in social media (a mistake administrations have been making, while congratulating themselves for being savvy, since Obama) and uses Twitter as the administration Slack page, but also takes its cues for how to speak and behave directly from those sloughs, is acting unwisely and dishonorably. Regardless, I'm not inclined to treat any given stray remark, often by some punk staffer, as the last word about that office or officer's views. But when you say something that contains multiple errors, all quite telling, and take the time and effort to make the graphics all pretty, I think at some point your audience is entitled to conclude that you have moved beyond slips of the tongue or pen. Especially if you put it up on your (currently misnamed) official Twitter page. 

The message in question:

Start with the fact that Martin, not having been confirmed by the Senate, is not the the U.S. Attorney for D.C. yet; he remains the interim U.S. Attorney. A pedantic point, to be sure--unless you are addressing someone whose amour-propre led him to insist on being referred to as "U.S. Attorney" in court filings within days of taking his interim position. Add the general idiocy about putting America first--if not as a misunderstanding of journalism, then as evidence of ongoing ignorance of, indifference to, or contempt for Title 1.7 of the Justice Manual (in fairness, he is only the interim U.S. Attorney), as well as of general principles of discretion and good taste. Add the gross misunderstanding of who he and his office represent. (Also in fairness: Martin is not always clear on who he represents.) At that point, the misplaced apostrophe and incorrect plural has to be seen as the cherry on top.

I would like to greet this with better humor. Everyone loves a clown, after all. But I am so fond of the First Amendment. And the interim U.S. Attorney has spent a busy week or two demonstrating a decidedly dubious regard for it. His tryout round was bad enough. But his letters of last week, seeking "clarification" from Democratic members about speech he treated, absurdly, as raising "threat" concerns, suggested that he is elevating the use of state power to chill speech from an unforced error to a mission.

Like FIRE, whose statement I link to immediately above, I spent much of last week thinking of this in terms of a governmental abuse of true threat doctrine. But I think that is giving Martin too little credit for ambition, and paying too little attention to the content and context of the statement from Sen. Schumer (an asinine statement, to be sure) that Martin targeted for inquiry. Really, this is more properly seen as a revival--impressively, in the absence of anything like a war or emergency--of circa-1917 views on incitement. "The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters, and I had thought we had done with them forever." I rarely feel the need to quote Justice Douglas, but, I guess, never say never again.

A clown, as I say. But more in the Pennywise vein--still a clown, but also dangerous and scary. As always, in this personalist or patrimonialist administration as in any other, the final blame rests at the top. But it certainly includes the interim U.S. Attorney himself.