Use My Mugshot, or Else!

Journal

The Rule of Law

Part I

My old English law dictionary that saw me through all of my law examinations and degree in the 1980s defines the rule of law, thus:

“The doctrine of English law expounded by Dicey, in Law of the Constitution, that all men are equal before the law, whether they be officials or not (except the Queen), so that the acts of officials in carrying out the behests of the executive government or cognizable by the ordinary courts and judged by the ordinary law, as including any special powers, privileges or exemptions attributed to the Crown by prerogative or statute.

So far as offences are concerned, an offender will not be punished except for a breach of the ordinary law, and in the ordinary courts: there is here an absence of the exercise of arbitrary power. Further, the fundamental rights of the citizen; the freedom of the person, freedom of speech, and freedom of meeting or association, are rooted in the ordinary law, and not upon any special “constitutional guarantees.””

— Osborn's Concise Law Dictionary Sixth Edition by John Burke, London 1976

Forty-seven years on, it remains our Standard with only one slight emendation, namely, that today in the United Kingdom it would read ‘(except the King)’.

This is the bedrock upon which parliamentary democracy is founded. And it was not achieved simply by legislation. long, long before 1776, men fought in these islands to establish the rule of law, to separate parliament from the Crown and to ensure that pariament had the final word, not the monarch. This achievement was a thousand years in the making.

Part II

The Judges

I now move forward, from 1989 (the year in which I received my first of thirty annual practising certificates), to almost half a century. It is 2023. For this part, let’s pop across the Pond to the Land of the Free and the Not So Free.

Of the role of the Judiciary I read thus:

“The permanence of judges is what gives them power and neutrality. In the words of the Code of Conduct for US judges, lifetime appointments allow them to be free from “partisan interests, public clamor, or fear of criticism,” and focus on being faithful to the law. These federal employees can still be removed for misconduct. As the Founders wrote, the courts were designed to be “composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior” (emphasis added), so they outlined a process for Congress to impeach corrupt judges. Scarcely more than a dozen have been removed this way.

 

They cannot be fired by the White House. To the architects of the Constitution, no one was a bigger threat to a judge’s independence than the president.

 

Under the pseudonym Publius, Alexander Hamilton explained why:

 

“By being often associated with the Executive, they might be induced to embark too far in the political views of that magistrate and thus a dangerous combination might by degrees be cemented between the Executive and Judiciary Departments... It is peculiarly dangerous to place them in a situation to be either corrupted or influenced by the Executive.”

 

Donald Trump wanted to narrow the separation between himself and the robed men and women who could determine his fate. His primary means of influencing judges was bullying on social media. He developed a pattern of verbal abuse against federal judges who ruled against him - “totally biased,” “incompetent,” “so-called judge,” “putting the country in danger,” “mind is shot,” “misconduct,” “witch hunt,” and so on - to stir public animosity. The missives got more ominous over time.

 

“It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’” Trump wrote in November 2018, assailing a federal appeals court that struck down one of his immigration policies. He said the judges were “making our Country unsafe,” demanding they back off and let his people “DO THEIR JOB!”

 

“If not,” the president wrote ominously, “there will be only bedlam, chaos, injury and death.”Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”

— Miles Taylor former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Trump Presidency writing on page 120-121 of Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump ~ New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, New Delhi 2023

Part III

I have long held Miles Taylor in high regard in light of his frequent appearances on the BBC News program that airs nightly as Context… the World in Context… where the BBC chief presenter Christian Fraser discusses matters of international concern and in which British (and world audiences) can look in on the United States of America in real-time. And it is refreshing to hear the views of politicians and lawyers and scientists and the military - of all political persuasions from all the participating countries. Here, is a balanced America.

In my early days, I was sceptical about anyone who worked for the Trump Administration.

Following the blatant attempt to overthrow the elected government on January 6, 2021 and the 45th President’s openly lethargic reaction to its suppression, left me in no doubt that Trump, Bannon et al were doing the very things Stephen Kevin Bannon had boasted of openly in an interview with the BBC. All I could think at the time was…

‘This is like tuning into Goebbels before 1939. God Almighty! So this is the stuff my grandparents listened to, the stuff that frightened my parents as children and teenagers out of their wits’.

Part IV

How strange! The most humiliating action against any person - and I speak as a retired police officer as well as a junior lawyer - was that moment when people who were being charged with serious offences were asked to stand on the spot, look at the camera, not to move, not to blink, and then on the second frame, to turn sideways on the spot for the profile frame.

I have never heard of someone relishing the ‘mugshot’ and then making money out of the mugshot.

But what is more worrying to me, is that in a sizeable number of the homes of some seventy million American citizens who see Trump as the answer, that mughsot will now be framed. For silent supporters, it will be a carrfully treated hidden ‘favourite bookmarker’. Visitors will sometimes be expected to drink their coffee from the family’s prized mugshot mug set. T-Shirts and towels abound with the mugshot. If Agatha Christie had tried writing this into one of her plots, it would have been the undoing of all her work. But then I recall, too, that not everyone in Great Britain in 1939 saw anything wrong in Adolf Hitler. Fine. I suspect a few of them were not alive to see Christmas 1940 because of what Adolf had by then gotten up to.

In Germany, if a home did not bear a framed portrait of der Führer, then that home was in for trouble.

Americans, beware. The wolf is at the door, prowling around like a hungry, roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour.

In English Law and in American Law we have the common latin expression Caveat Emptor ~ Let the Buyer beware. We have also SUFFRAGATOR Cave ~ Let the Voter beware.

Part V

A Skit
by
Kenneth Thomas Webb

The guard yawned.

That is NOT my mugshot. Gimmee my mugshot mug. I wanna have my coffee NOW you dum-fuck!

The guard eyed him thoughtfully.

Donald, Donald. Calm down, calm down! (gesturing with outstretched arms as if attempting to show his infant son how he would ‘take-off’ like a bird).

You’ll give yourself a heart attack. Now go back to your bed.

But take down that thing! That is NOT me.

To me though, Trumpo, it is. Now walk back quetly, and for Pete’s sake, will you stop farting every other step.
You’re worse than my kids! And the eldest is only five!

Goodnight, Donald.

The guard watched the Quiffe slouch back along to Cell 2020.

He entered.

The guard pressed the switch.

Cell 2020 slowly sealed off to the outside world again as the bars silently closed the doorway til roll-call.

I know that not every American sees we have anything to worry about in the event that the Next Trump and MAGA get into the White House. History, though, reminds me that that is precisely what the German People decided in 1933 when they let Adolf Hitler have the keys to the Chancellory and Reichstag. Twelve years later, both were in ruins, and a greater part of the 1933 German civilian population were dead.

28 August 2023
All Rights Reserved

LIVERPOOL

© 2023 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Front Cover

Rear Cover

The Quiffe, The Coat … and I think the barber in Absentia on the day Donald Trump Junior’s Hot Choc was left on his desk for him, BUT, uncovered, so Hot Choc leapt at the chance and ran away with the whirling three blade Fan. Dad was not amused that day! It was the same day that Scotland informed him that president, ex-president , convicted ex-president or whatever, Trump senior was no longer welcome in any part of Scotland. And it was no good jumping up and down reminding the Scots that he had Scots roots. What’s more, the Scottish Parliament was already using the Rule of Law to deprive him of his assets on a mighty big golf course. And if he moaned, then they’d simply ask the United Kingdom government to lend a hand. And after what Mrs Theresa May had been through with Trumpo, believe me, the Geater British People were in no mood to be putting up with ‘Johnson without a brain’. They sighed. ‘At least Boris does have a brain and is quite good in rare, very rare moments. But that man? God help us!’