When Our Leaders Refuse to Execute the Law - The Wall Street Journal

Peter Reinharz is right to blast Alvin Bragg, the new Manhattan district attorney, for refusing to enforce the laws enacted by the legislature, and for making up his own laws instead (“Alvin Bragg’s Threat to Democracy,” Jan. 25). That’s not democracy. But Mr. Bragg is hardly alone.

The U.S. has a thick body of immigration law adopted by Congress. The Constitution says the president’s job is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But President Biden doesn’t like the immigration laws, so he has decided to take care that they not be faithfully executed.

Mr. Biden may have gotten the idea from his former boss, President Obama. After Congress declined to pass the Dream Act, which would have protected illegal immigrants brought to this country as children, Mr. Obama explained that he was the president, not the king, so he couldn’t enact the law by fiat. Nonetheless, eventually, that’s exactly what he did. And he got away with it.

Will Messrs. Biden and Bragg also get away with it?

Lee Dembart

Los Angeles

All of what Mr. Reinharz says is correct, but take it one step further. If local prosecutors ignore the law and do as they like, why have a legislature at all? You would think the legislators would be outraged that officials ignore the laws they’ve passed, and that they would do something about it. Yet the concept of competing branches of government does not seem to be working here. By its inaction, the legislature is making itself irrelevant. I would like to say that the legislators are working themselves out of a job, but they seem untouchable, though they do little or nothing.

David Peterson

Orlando, Fla.

When Mr. Reinharz was chief of the New York City Family Court’s juvenile-rights division, I was the general counsel for the Department of Probation. We worked closely and, with extremely talented help, we were able to replace chaos with order.

We recognized that there are some offenders who need to be incarcerated. Do those currently running the so-called justice system in New York City recognize that? No amount of soft justice can protect the city’s citizens without the harsh and retributive hand of punishment for the repeat and violent offenders.

Howard W. Yagerman

New York

Mr. Yagerman was acting commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation.

Following the gunning down of two of New York’s finest (“Assassinating Police in New York,” Review & Outlook, Jan. 26), Mayor Eric Adams rolled out a thoughtful multi-pronged strategy to arrest the city’s ugly devolution to the bad old days. Missing from his anticrime plan was a commitment to reinstate a broken-windows strategy, which two decades ago helped turn Gotham into America’s safest big city.

Mr. Adams also passed up a golden opportunity to call on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove Mr. Bragg, the newly elected, George Soros -backed Manhattan district attorney. The mayor could have demonstrated that he’s truly the new sheriff in town by sticking a pin in his predecessor’s virtue-signaling move to close the jail on Rikers Island.

Hence the signs are sadly there that Mr. Adams could turn out to be a new kind of “RINO”—a reformer in name only.

James Hyland

Beechhurst, N.Y.

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source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bragg-memo-law-democracy-biden-border-11643406597

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