This will be viewed through the partisan lens and the current crop of MAGA GOP will love it. If they can take a deep breath, slow down, pause, and see what it means for an executive lead by a Democrat, without check and balance, without allowance for dissent and opposition, I think most of them would see the danger here... maybe.
He is unlike any AG we've had in my memory. I can't recall an AG as outrageously partisan as Barr. Previous AG's would at least give lip service to being bipartisan, and most genuinely attempted to be somewhat even handed. Barr is nothing like that. He should be impeached. I wonder if any Republicans in the House would vote for his impeachment. Surely some would.
I will gently disagree. Going back to the 50s, attorneys general have been more or less political/partisan throughout the period. Perhaps only Janet Reno stands out as an outlier. A recent Yale Law & Policy Review article provides a number of examples: https://ylpr.yale.edu/inter_alia/to...s-view-presidents-and-their-attorneys-general I will also go out on a limb here and say that having read Barr's speech from Friday (text online at https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/...-19th-annual-barbara-k-olson-memorial-lecture ), I don't think there's anything particularly outrageous about the speech--certainly not enough to justify the reactions of Painter et al. cited in the OP. (Painter et al. virtually prove Barr's point in the section about "loyal opposition.") He is speaking on originalism, so that's going to piss off almost everyone outside of the Federalist Society. Barr's philosophy of executive power/authority may vary from the norm in law schools, but that's not terribly surprising given the political leanings of most law professors. I think the fact that Barr chose to comment on current political events obviously ruffled some feathers.
