Once upon a time, the goal in elections in a democracy was to get more votes than the other guy.  No longer.  Under the Biden administration, if a conservative tries to help his side win an election, he is liable, at least in the Eastern District of New York, to being hit with an indictment for conspiring with others "to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the safe exercise and enjoyment of a fight and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to wit: the right to vote."

The quoted language comes from the indictment in United States of America v. Douglass Mackey, case no. 1:21-cr-ooo80-ngg.  The initials refer to the jurist presiding over the Mackey trial, Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis, appointed to the court in May 2000 by President Bill Clinton.  The case has proceeded to trial because, according to Times propagandists Colin Moynihan and Alan Feuer, the judge "ruled that the case should continue, saying it was 'about conspiracy and injury, not speech' and adding that Mr. Mackey's contention that his speech was protected as satire was 'a question of fact reserved for the jury.'"

A matter of conspiring to commit conservative satire?

According to the account in The New York Times, March 20, on the start of the trial, Mackey tried to suppress votes for Hillary Clinton from Democrat voters, "sometimes singling out Black people," by falsely persuading them that "they could cast presidential ballots by text."

The indictment of Mr. Mackey is dated February 9, 2021.  As Golda Meir told President Sadat when he landed in Israel in 1977, what has taken the case so long?

Zealous Democrats apparently have not stopped to think: if it is a criminal offense to tell fibs about election processes, won't Republicans, when they control the Department of Justice, hit their political opponents with oppressing Republican voters with false media reports about leftist corruption — or leftist lies that a Republican presidential candidate is a stooge for a Russian autocrat, or about publicizing a dossier with baseless allegations of bizarre sexual conduct?

The Times report on the Mackey trial appeared on page A23 of the print edition.  The preceding page, A22, carries the latest hit piece from Charlie Savage on Donald J. Trump: "Potential Charges Circling the Former President."

Savage proceeded to put forward an array of anti-Trump allegations from the usual politically biased sources, including district attorneys in New York and Georgia — and, of course, the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, whose every member (seven Democrats and two phony Republicans) dishonored the Constitution they were sworn to uphold.  His concluding paragraph:

While the [Pelosi select] committee said the events of Jan 6 met the standard for an insurrection, it is notable that the prosecutors have not accused any of the Jan. 6 defendants to date of that offense — even those they charged with seditious conspiracy.

Give Biden and Garland time, especially if the Republicans continue to play political tiddlywinks, while the neo-totalitarians bring up heavy artillery to destroy freedom in America, viewing freedom as shorthand for conspiring against the established order.

Image via Max Pixel.