Virginia Governor Ralph Northam speaks to gun control activists at a rally in Richmond, Va., July 9, 2019.The French Revolution’s Committee of Public Safety in 1793. It was the central governing agency for enforcing the Revolution’s decrees.
The 2018 elections swept into power a revolutionary government in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s revolutionary in its leaps away from the customary understanding on highly polarizing issues such as gun rights and abortion. These issues go to the heart of what it means to be a human being and a citizen’s relationship to the state. Like the French Revolution, this will be a revolution from the center, Raleigh being like Paris of 1789.
The Paris mob in 1789.
In 1793, the Reign of Terror, headquartered in Paris, leaped out into the provinces in the Vendée, much of northwestern France, the region around Lyon, etc. The Terror with its revolutionary tribunals, mass executions, and vicious assaults on the Church ignited a popular rvolt against the Revolution’s scheme of radical utopia. Suppression in the provinces took the form of slaughter and bloody class warfare. France experienced the tragedy of its own blue/red divide.
The blue/red divide may be an overused cliché to some extent but it is also very alive in Virginia. The northern urban centers and suburban districts in the shadow of DC – and heavily “blue” – have taken over the state government with the zeal to impose a whole cluster of new gun control measures on the nine-tenths of the state not so inclined. 91 of 95 counties, 13 of 38 independent cities (treated like counties), and 24 towns have already declared themselves to be Second Amendment sanctuaries in opposition to what they consider the revolution’s sweeping edicts.
Look at all the Virginia jurisdictions in blue who passed Second Amendment Sanctuary resolutions.
How far will comrade Ralph Northam go to impose the revolution’s decrees? Maybe somewhat stunned by the opposition Northam said on Dec. 11, “If we have constitutional laws on the books and law enforcement officers are not enforcing those laws on the books then there are going to be some consequences but I’ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.”
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring in May 2019.
Virginia’s commissar Attorney General, Mark Herring, leveled an even more direct threat to the opposition districts when he declared on Dec. 20 that “they [the gun-control laws] will be enforced, and they will be followed”. Attention then shifted to the Virginia National Guard as the newly minted Army of the Revolution. Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, the Adjutant General of Virginia, issued an equivocal response when questioned about the use of his troops to put down the widespread rebellion. How could he be otherwise? Nothing has happened as of yet.
Will the Army, though, allow themselves to be used as the enforcers of highly detested laws? The Army of the Revolution would be put in an awkward position when the local sheriff, DA, or jury refuses to arrest, try, or convict a parent for allowing their 17-year-old daughter access to a gun to defend herself against a couple meth-heads. Massive and passive resistance may render the revolutionaries’ dream of a gun-free utopia mute. Or will it? If history is any guide, secular political utopias have the nasty habit of becoming coercive, very coercive.
Mass shootings of anti-Revolution rebels at Nantes in 1793 in a sketch from the time.
The blue/red divide is nothing new. And it seems that our modern revolutions always have a “blue” cast in their attempt to overturn a deeply-rooted and traditional ethos. Welcome to Virginia’s historical rhyming with late 18th-century France. Will it be as traumatic? I hope not.
Compare the receptions received by Pres. Trump at a Washington Nationals World Series game in Washington, DC, on Oct. 28, 2019, and the college football national championship game in New Orleans between LSU and Clemson on Jan. 13, 2020, about 10 weeks later. Watch the 2 videos for the night-and-day reactions. He gets booed and is subjected to chants of “lock him up” in DC while he experienced sustained cheers and applause from a mostly Louisiana and South Carolina – hotbeds of Red America – crowd in New Orleans.
Washington, DC, Oct. 28, 2019
New Orleans, La., Jan. 13, 2020
Let’s dispense with the nonsense that there is no severe politico-cultural divide in America. It exists, and boy does it exist! I attribute the phenomena to a resurgence of a semi-violent, bombastic radical left alongside the rise of a provocateur on the right, Trump. Make no mistake about it, though, this unhinged left had been around since the 1960’s and has wormed its way into the corporate boardroom, faculty lounges, all avenues of our media, academia, and is resplendent in the training of our teachers and our kids’ curriculum. Few of our kids’ schools escape its tentacles. The cities and coasts are the nests for this myopic and revolutionary collectivism, and can be dubbed “blue” America.
Outside the blue bubbles of the cities and the coasts resides the vast stretches of Red America. Do our self-anointed cultural betters in their urban blue bubbles know how out-of-step they are in relation to the rest of the country? Red America certainly knows about them since the “blues” control the cultural commanding heights. If the “blues” know about their estrangement, I don’t think that they care.
No, I didn’t get the title wrong. From my observations of the Titans/Ravens showdown yesterday – granted, I’m no expert – it looked like the Titans stole the Ravens identity. They were as physical as the Ray Lewis Ravens of yesteryear. It showed in many ways.
Way #1: 0 for 3 in 4th down conversions (Was it 0-for-3 or 0-for-4?). That stat was a proxy for the Titan “D” line consistently stuffing the run and refusing to be blown off the line. Of course, it’s easier to do if your offense is constantly chewing 7-8 minutes of the clock at a time. Plenty of time for the “D” folks to rest, and the Ravens’ defense to tire from all the Henry pounding.
Way #2: 2nd-and-4 beats 2nd-and-8 anytime. Wow, Derrick Henry is a pure phenom. Cutback blocking, timely cuts, and monster size and speed creates havoc. The Titans forced the Ravens to the line of scrimmage leaving spot throws deep downfield. In that way, a journeyman like the Titans’ Ryan Tannehill would seem like an all-pro.
The Titans’ Derrick Henry as he breaks the line for 60-yard scamper.
Way #3: Don’t rest your scatback quarterback in week 17. Such quarterbacks get off-stride and lose their rhythm and spontaneity after 3 weeks of … not much. In the game, Lamar Jackson was continually off-target. His on-the-cuff decisions were poor and lacked instantaneous recognition. These are essential attributes for an offense defined by all things Jackson.
Way #4: Was it me or did it seem like the Ravens were much more frequently on the ground with injury timeouts? The Titans hit harder and more consistently throughout the game. Mike Vrabel and staff had their guys ready. Indeed, what was to come appeared the week before when they dismantled the Patriots.
Just some passing thoughts on the game. What do you think?
Neil Peart of Rush, July 2010 (Paul Warner/WireImage)Neil Peart posed at his drum kit in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on 17th December 1977. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)
Neil Peart, master drummer for Rush, died of brain cancer earlier this week. May he rest in peace and God’s comfort for his family, friends, and devoted fans.
He was my age, born in 1952. He was 14 days my junior. In many ways, in his early lyrics, he reflected the fascinations of young and preternaturally rebellious teenage boys, alone and bookish and enthralled by individualism. To no surprise, to many teenage boys who were precociously literate in a facile sense, the writings of Ayn Rand would captivate them. Her libertarianism made an impression on them, and maybe myself to a degree during my coming-of-age years. After all, traditions and the standards that derive from traditions can seem like unnecessary and damaging social barnacles to a young and undeveloped mind.
Ayn Rand
It’s easy to drift into atheism or any of the iconoclastic faiths, finding the only one you knew the best, the one you grew up with, as flawed.
Then maturity sets in. Life’s experiences marinate your thoughts and a person might come to realize what G.K. Chesterton noticed a century before when he saw such minds “in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea” (from his book “Orthodoxy”). Traditions and traditional faith, and their moral and social norms, may have a sounder basis than a young and energetic mind can grasp. Peart came to understand this fact when he seemed to reject Randianism and even pure libertarianism when he said in a 2012 Rolling Stone interview:
“So as you go through past, your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I’ve brought my view and also – I’ve just realized this – Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we’re all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that’s when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding heart Libertarian. That’ll do.”
In many ways, Neil Peart represents a world and a time that I could easily recognize. It was a time of the breezy rejection of the old and the juvenile understanding that nothing exists beyond the self.
The kids from “Stranger Things”.
Such a mindset may make the individual a god, but at least it doesn’t wallow in the Sanders/Warren socialism, the collectivism of same, and the similarly self-identified cliques who are united by nothing more than the victimhood of their self-proclaimed oppression. If Randianism or libertarianism gets a young person to rebuff the nonsense, something good may come of it.
Below are the lyrics and live performance of their song “Anthem”, taken from an Ayn Rand novella, “Anthem”. You’ll need the lyrics to get the point.
Anthem
Know your place in life is where you want to be
Don’t let them tell you that you owe it all to me
Keep on looking forward, no use in looking ’round
Hold your head above the crowd and they won’t bring you down
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought
Live for yourself
There’s no one else more worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts
Will only cry out for more
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought
Well, I know they’ve always told you
Selfishness was wrong
Yet it was for me, not you
I came to write this song
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders in the world, wonders in the world
Wonders in the world they wrought, wrought, wrought
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: N PEART / A LIFESON / G LEE
Not to see Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Richard Jewell” is to engage in citizenship malpractice.
The real Richard A. Jewell, 1997. (photo: Greg Gibson/Associated Press, 1997)
Every citizen should see Eastwood’s portrayal of how well-meaning people in powerful government positions, allied to rambunctious reporters, can be so awfully wrong and mature into a malevolent force without even knowing it. It’s how prosecutors can pursue an individual, wrongfully convict the person, pursue harsh sentencing, and resist any effort to set the record straight. It’s how investigations are pursued on the flimsiest of “probable cause” and can morph into other investigations because it is heartily believed that the guy must have committed some crime somewhere, somehow. Does this remind you of the events leading to the current impeachment melee?
A notion gets stuck in the craw of government officials – call it a “profile”, an expectation about the kind of person who commit these sinful acts – and persists until action is taken to the detriment of all. Richard Jewell was slapped by the powers-that-be as symptomatic of the “hero syndrome” (creating a situation or crime to become a hero). The media’s and the FBI’s “rush to judgment” led to Jewell’s public humiliation as the Olympic Park bomber in 1996 – only 7 years later to find the real culprit, Eric Rudolph.
Eric Robert Rudolph being escorted from the Cherokee County Jail for a hearing in federal court in 2003 after being on the run for five years.
False ideas creep into the heads of mighty people in a burgeoning and energetic federal government. And if these people have guns, watch out! It’s how we can have a Ruby Ridge (1992). It’s how we can experience a Waco (assault on David Koresh’s compound, 1993). It’s how we can have serial investigations of a presidential candidate as a “Russian mole”, and later to try to pin something else on him when the first effort failed in the belief that he’s still corrupt to the core.
The Branch Davidian compound, Waco, Tx., Feb.28, 1993.
There’s something in the government ether from the 1990’s to the present that is so insidious. No, it’s not a “deep state”. It’s something endemic – or generic – to government. The Founders’ idea of government as a necessary evil is as true today as it ever was. It’s a lesson we had better repeatedly teach ourselves and our young.
“Speaking truth to power” became a cliché by people wearing fake vaginas on their heads the day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Well, take a look at “speaking truth to power”, the culturally powerful, or the culturally privileged – aka, Hollywood – by Golden Globe host, Ricky Gervais, last night. The line about most of those folks, all prettied up in tuxes and gowns, being less educated than Greta Thunberg rings oh-so-true. Take that Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio.
I was stunned and couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The whole monologue was great, but the spicy parts occurred in the last couple of minutes. It was far better than the speeches by the cranial vacuum-tubed luminaries. Enjoy.
I know, I know, it’s Christmas eve but I couldn’t resist commenting on the latest impeachment fracas. Pelosi is holding impeachment hostage by refusing to deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Like the sword of Damocles, now in the hands of Pelosi, Trump will face an assembly line of impeachment articles as she demands more witnesses and documents for further expeditions into all things Trump before she turns over the already-approved articles to the Senate. But she says that she is a good Catholic, hates no one, and prays for the target of her political jihad. Really, how good of a Catholic is she? Is this Christ-like behavior?
One has to wonder. Is it Christian to endlessly hound a citizen by placing them under the perpetual gaze of inquisitors? Is it Christian for one house of Congress to step outside its legal role of investigating possible wrongdoing and demand the other house, acting as jurors, step outside its role to do what the first house refused to do, such as produce the information that it chose not to provide as part of its duty? Trump is no angel, and neither are Pelosi, Schumer, and the Resistance.
Is it Christian for her to proudly announce her Christian bonafides as she soils the very doctrines of her faith? Under the euphemism “right to choose”, she crowed in 2018 that “I’m a rabid supporter of a woman’s right to choose …” Rabid indeed! Earlier this year, rather than condemn Ralph Northam’s (D, governor of Va.) support of a live-birth abortion bill in the Virginia legislature and his description of it, she dodged the question when asked. Not even the killing of a newborn can draw the ire of this allegedly “sincere” Catholic.
In addition, she has persistently opposed efforts to protect viable babies in the womb and those born alive in the course of an abortion. She is absolutely grotesque when it comes to the Christian responsibility to protect life.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was rejected for Holy Communion by a priest in South Carolina, Oct. 2019
It doesn’t stop there. In that space where some assertions of gay rights conflict with religious freedom strides the hubristic Nancy Pelosi. Religious freedom must give way, according to her holiness Pelosi. Her House-passed Equality Act would strip protections for denominations with Bible-based views on sexuality and family, particularly if their Christian calling carries them beyond the sanctuary into running orphanages, hospitals, counseling services, schools, and wherever human need lies. Pelosi wants to essentially rewrite millennia-old Christian doctrine to fit her social views. Where’s the Christianity in this?
Here Polish World War II war orphans are being cared for at a Catholic orphange after the War in 1946.
This season to honor the birth of Christ is saddled with the preachiness of a pagan-Christian. Yes, it’s an oxymoron and also a reality in today’s morally-confused Democratic Party. I find it hard to take seriously Pelosi’s attempt to wrap herself in the garb of the Church. Does the phrase “false prophet” remind you of anyone?
Galli (r) appears on Al Sharpton’s CNN program in the wake of the editorial.
A Preface
The December 19 issue of Christianity Today – prominent evangelical publication founded by the evangelist Billy Graham – came out with a scathing editorial calling for Trump’s impeachment by the magazine’s chief editor, Mark Galli. A wide array responses critical of Galli views quickly ensued from notable evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son) and those affiliated with the Family Research Council.
It’s clear from Galli’s prior statements about Trump before the 2016 election that he had a strong anti-Trump bias. In 2016 he disparaged not only Trump but his supporters, many of whom are evangelicals, when he wrote, “Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.”
It would be a mistake to assume that Galli speaks for the majority of evangelicals, let alone his magazine’s founder, Billy Graham. Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, disclosed that his father voted for Trump: “Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece. In fact, he would be very disappointed.” Further he said, “My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
Galli speaks for himself as he sets himself apart from the vast evangelical movement. Below is my reaction to the obvious anti-Trump bias in a publication closely associated with Billy Graham. Galli richly deserves the blowback of his words.
My Reaction to Galli
John O’Sullivan, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and pundit, announced O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” I’m beginning to wonder if Mark Galli’s (editor in chief of Christianity Today) condemnation of Trump in his recent editorial is confirmation of O’Sullivan’s insight. One has to ponder the possibility.
The transformation of originally center-right organizations into center-left ones starts with a muddle. Fundamental canons of the institution are confused with the passing fascinations of our cultural arbiters in well-to-do urban enclaves and the commanding heights of our media. Environmentalism, for instance, creeps into sermons and encyclicals by melding “stewardship” with campaigns against plastics, CO2, and preservationist land use policies. Not surprisingly, Sunday school lessons are littered with the pop politics. And it doesn’t stop there.
Further evidence of the politicized leftward infection is the facile proclamation of faithfulness to long-established principles while accepting the premises of the left. Now here’s a real muddle. It was clearly evident in Galli’s call for Trump’s impeachment.
First, the cognitive clutter of Galli’s piece was palpable in the attempt to erect a parallel between Bill Clinton’s perjury before a federal grand jury with Trump’s request to investigate the corruption of people who include the scions of powerful Democratic Party personages. Galli blindly endorses the worst possible interpretation of a conversational and rambling phone call to the Ukrainian president as if his and the Resistance’s interpretation is the only one feasible. Aping Adam Schiff, Galli proclaims that Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” This is nothing but tendentious political boilerplate. It’s demeaning for the editor of one of the most respected of evangelical journals. Galli just reduced the magazine’s reputation many notches.
President Bill Clinton’s videotaped grand jury deposition on Aug. 17, 1998
Perjury before a federal grand jury is a federal crime (18 U.S. Code § 1621), the last time that I checked. Where would Galli put a rambling phone call asking the Ukrainians to investigate corruption of gold-digging American politicos in the federal penal code? And if you wanted to put it in there, how would you state it without criminalizing the president’s Constitutional duty to conduct foreign policy? Any effort would produce a hot mess.
Oh, I forgot, committing perjury in a federal district court and before a federal grand jury by a person with as many extramarital escapades as the Marquis de Sade – including quite probably a rape, like de Sade – is the equivalent of mentioning the Bidens in a congratulatory phone call. Not! Galli lacks the simple Biblical principle of proportionality.
For the benefit of Adam Schiff, Galli, and the rest of the Democratic scolds in the Resistance, here’s a more plausible alternative rendering of the call, one understandable to a 16-year-old. Trump’s mode of conversation is not professorial, as in a lecture or a speech in the well of the Senate. He rambles like a stand-up comedian in a club. He’ll have a thought that originated on the couches of Fox and Friends and run with it. So, if the eye-brow raising boast of Joe Biden getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating the younger Biden’s company gets Trump’s attention, and not being careful with his mouth like a smooth-talking politician, Trump bounced the idea off his cohorts and in his call to Zelensky. In such an atmosphere, policy arises from a series of rambling conversations with no clear and obvious determination. Trump brings it up in passing to Zelensky and some administrative underlings understandably mistake it for a directive to withhold aid, both before and after the call, while others aren’t quite so sure. In the end, the aid was released without anything in return. If the previous sentence is “B”, and Galli’s moral condemnation of Trump is “A”, how does Galli (and Schiff) ever get to “A”? Galli fell for a partisan canard.
This scenario was borne out by the testimony before Schiff’s tribunal. Those who mistook a meandering policy-making process for a clear directive appeared before the tribunal, but even they couldn’t identify the crime. And neither they nor the hanging-judge Democrats on the panel could account for the Ukrainians getting the aid as no investigations were conducted by the Ukrainians.
And the hypocrisy of the whole thing is astounding. Trump gave the Ukrainians lethal aid – i.e., weapons – while these same Democrats and Obama were only willing give the Ukrainians band aids and cotton balls. Spare me the convenient discovery of concern for the fortunes of a small country in the jaws of Putin’s Russia. Only mild protests came from the likes of Obama, Schiff, Pelosi, and Schumer as eastern Ukraine and the Crimea were amputated. Galli, the glaring hypocrisy of the hyper-partisan Democrats should heighten your sensitivity to their incredulous proclamations. They have no evidence of wrongdoing – least of all an impeachable offense – and neither do you [Galli].
President Barack Obama answers questions during his news conference following the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, August 2014.
I suspect a deep prejudice against Trump in people like Galli. A prejudice can exist whenever a prejudgment has been made in spite of the evidence. The prejudice allows a person to lose perspective. A history of political behavior in the era BT [before Trump] might prove enlightening if the prejudice didn’t get in the way of doing the research. A stroll down memory lane to the 1930’s and the reign of Saint FDR would prove instructive if only Galli cared.
Where shall I start? The bloating of the federal budget under the guise of “fiscal stimulus” was very useful for advancing the FDR’s political prospects and was put at his service. He withheld federal aid to states and districts who opposed his initiatives. The larceny was naturally more active during election season. Political opponents found their FCC licenses revoked. Charles Lindbergh found himself under FBI surveillance with FDR’s nodding approval. And let’s not forget the prosecution and persecution of Samuel Insull to fulfill FDR’s need for the scalp of one of the “great malefactors of wealth” for allegedly causing the Great Depression. What about the herding of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps? Of course, going down the memory hole is any recognition that FDR is probably the cause of a depression becoming a Great one.
To put finis on the Insull affair, after FDR’s prosecutors got their hands on Insull, he was acquitted of all charges in two trials.
Do we need to unearth the sordid political activities of the Kennedys and LBJ as the Church Committee did in 1976? Galli, come on, take a look.
We have an ample history of the conjoining of “politician” and “skullduggery”. Some of it is illegal, and, by Galli’s standard, all of it is impeachable … far more impeachable than a one-off congratulatory phone call to the president of a small country.
Galli’s standard for impeachable offenses is so loose that we might as well have a permanent congressional committee to handle presidential impeachments, particularly during periods of divided government. We’ll need it. At that point, the presidency will become the handmaiden of whatever majority happens to capture the House. Right alongside “sequestration” and “continuing resolutions” we’ll have “impeachment” as part of our daily news briefing. Galli’s standard has no limiting principle, at least not one recognizable to mortal man.
Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying, “Come now, let us reason together …” Galli confuses partisan hyperbole for reason. Context, perspective, and proportion have no role in his thought process. He has substituted invective for “let us reason together” rather than pursue a more thoughtful rendering of the issues before us.
Kudos to Senators Josh Hawley (R, Mo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R, Tn.) for attempting to really drain the swamp. Their bill, S. 2672, would move “90% of the positions in 10 Cabinet-level departments out of D.C.” What a great idea: break up the place! The thought occurred to me some time ago as the Trump-collusion imbroglio was gaining steam and I was reading Geof Shepard’s “The Real Watergate Scandal” on my Kindle. Come to think of it, a real state depression in DC wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the country.
Blackburn and Hawley.
All those minions scurrying about DC have created a world all their own. The progressives of the late 19th century assured us that the halcyon days of good government would be upon us if only more power was deposited in the hands of degreed professionals who were educated to treat all of reality as a matter for “science”. In other words, people like themselves.
Ironically, they ignored the implications of the “science” of people both as individuals and in large groups. People are simultaneously self-serving and altruistic, and not in equal measure – usually to the detriment of altruism. As a collective, they create a distinct society with its own norms and expectations. It’s a world unto itself.
The skyline of Washington, D.C., including the U.S. Capitol building, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and National Mall, is seen from the air, January 29, 2010. (Saul Loeb/AFP)
A trip into the world of the Watergate scandal sheds light on the brave new world of this administrative state. Let’s examine 3 prominent characters in the now bastardized but popular version of the story: Clark Mollenhoff, Mark Felt, and Bob Woodward.
Mollenhoff was a DC reporter and well-connected lawyer and friend of presiding judge John Sirica (Sirica is another of these networked DC folks). Not only was he well-connected, he got a position in the first year of the Nixon White House. His ambition to have direct access to Nixon and be Nixon’s premier sage was thwarted by learning that he would have to work under Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The job didn’t last much longer than a year. He becomes another of the disgruntled operatives – one among many thousands populating the District – roaming about looking for outlets for their scorn. In clearly improper, if not illegal, ex-parte meetings with Sirica, he would fill that coveted role of “sage”.
Clark Mollenhoff
Mark Felt, ex-Associate Director of the FBI, is another example of a person with stymied high aspirations. Passed over for the FBI directorate – it was handed to L. Patrick Gray – he simmered as second fiddle. He willingly became an espionage agent for Bernstein and Woodward as “Deep Throat”.
Former FBI official W. Mark Felt arrive at federal court in Washington 9/18 for the continuation of his trial on charges of approving illegal break-ins during the Nixon Administration.
Finally, what about Bob Woodward? He made his name in DC circles as an aide to Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His connections would be useful in his second career as WaPo muckraker.
Carl Bernstein, left, and Robert Woodward, who pressed the Watergate investigation, in Washington, D.C., May 7, 1973. (photo: AP)
What to make of all this? The country is governed in a bog-like slough of cliques, the excessively ambitious, and self-serving inter-relationships. If you’re an outsider from Ashtabula, beware!
Trump, does this sound familiar?
Forget all that stuff about rule by the people. Progressives bequeathed to us a government of an unaccountable nomenklatura.
That’s right, Blackburn and Hawley, we have no realistic recourse but to break it up! Break it up, and do so quickly.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dec. 11, 2019.
Like an abused wife in a divorce and seeking to salvage something from her 20 years in a failed marriage, the Democrats comb the Horowitz report on FISA abuse for something to justify their faith in the evils of all things Trump. Granted, the Trump tweets and coarseness in public performances are irritating, but are “traitor” and “shakedown artist” taking it a bit too far? I think so.
Any reasonable observer must conclude that the Russian-collusion angle fell apart. Mueller stumbled his way to the obvious. Nonetheless, the Dems tried to salvage something from the disaster by clinging to the bizarre locution of “failed to exonerate” on obstruction in Volume II of the Mueller Report. But prosecutors don’t “exonerate”. They either indict or they don’t. When they don’t, the matter is dropped. It’s treated as if it never existed.
Now, Horowitz uncovered 17 Justice/FBI FISA misdeeds. That’s the most that one can expect from a departmental IG who is limited to department documents and personnel. Plus, IG’s are famous for being deferential when they reach a dead end in spite of strong suspicions of further wrongdoing. The heavily restricted investigatory arena that they operate within produces constricted conclusions, or lack thereof.
Then we get to the Dems’ death grip on 2 other incomprehensible verdicts in the report: (1) the investigations were properly predicated and (2) a lack of bias in the investigations. #1 relies on such a low bar of cause to launch almost any government effort against a private citizen. #2 takes us back to the “deferential” thing. Without a cabal willing to engrave “We will get Trump removed” in granite with appropriate fingerprints, any suspect’s statement contradicting the obvious will be accepted. #1 and #2 are meaningless, but don’t tell the Dems that.
Still, the Dems must grapple with the clear 17 FISA abuses. The Dems must realize that the 17 misdeeds all break against Trump. An absence of bias would make at least some of the 17 going the other way. That didn’t happen. All 17 instances have the common thread of going after Trump. A chain of one-sided misbehaviors “fails to exonerate” Comey and the gang.
The Democrats are desperate. They’ve spent 3 years peddling nonsense. Unwilling to accept the rejection of their candidate by a broad extent of the country in 2016, they are trying to salvage something from their myth-making. It’s sad to watch on tv.
And the other shoe belonging to Durham has yet to drop. Wait, that promises to be interesting.
