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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2024 at 1:22 am
After taking office as President, Donald Trump openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
FBI headquarters
Among his attacks on federal law enforcers:
- Fired James Comey, the FBI director pursuing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential race to ensure Trump’s election.
- Threatened to fire Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, who continued that investigation after he fired Comey.
- Repeatedly attacked—verbally and on Twitter—his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
- (Sessions did so after the press revealed that, during the 2016 race, he twice met secretly with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.)
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for investigating his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
- Forced House Republicans to release a memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.
But the FBI could have refused to meekly accept such assaults.
A February 2, 2022 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offered a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.
A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.
Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.
Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.
MENDEZ: I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.
REAGAN: I do not.
MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.
REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.
MENDEZ: We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.
Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office. Later, he returns:
MENDEZ: We’ve got a serious problem.
REAGAN: Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.
MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.
REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.
MENDEZ: What are you going to do?
REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.
MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.
REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.
MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.
At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.
MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?
REAGAN: No.
MENDEZ: Bad news.
REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.
MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.
REAGAN: He was with a married woman.
MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.
REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.
MENDEZ: Sheesh!
REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.
MENDEZ: So what are we doing?
REAGAN: If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].
MENDEZ: Who else knows?
REAGAN: Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.
MENDEZ: Your judgment?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?
REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.
MENDEZ: I have your word on that?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.
J. Edgar Hoover
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.
Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Yet he didn’t file a single slander suit.
Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.
Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.
“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on May 10, 2024 at 12:11 am
On October 7, 2023, about 2,500 Hamas terrorists launched coordinated attacks on Israeli outposts and settlements, firing over 5,000 rockets and burning houses.
Since then, Israel has pounded Gaza with bombs, missiles. tanks and soldiers. About 62% of all homes have been destroyed. More than a million residents have been rendered homeless. Damages have been estimated at over $13 billion.
To date, more than 31,184 Palestinians have been killed and 72,889 injured, according to the local health authorities.
Nine years earlier—on November 18, 2014—a similar outrage had occurred in Jerusalem.
Screaming “Allah akbar!”–the Islamic battle cry, “God is Great!”—two Palestinians wielding meat cleavers and a gun slaughtered five worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue.
Three of the dead were Americans holding Israeli citizenship. Four of them were rabbis.
Eight people were injured—and one later died—before the attackers were killed in a shootout with police.
Aftermath of the attack on unarmed rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue
The attack was the deadliest in Israel’s capital since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary school.
And how did Palestinians react to the grisly murders of five unarmed worshippers?
They celebrated:
- Revelers in the Gazan city of Rafah handed out candy and brandished axes and posters of the suspects in praise of the deadly attack.
- Hamas-affiliated social media circulated violent and anti-Semitic cartoons hailing the killings.
- Students in Bethlehem joined in the festivities by sharing candy.
Palestinians celebrating the attack
- The parents of the two terrorists joyfully declared: “They are both Shahids (martyrs) and heroes.”
- A resident of the terrorists’ neighborhood stated: “We have many more youngsters and nothing to lose. They are willing to harm Jews, anything for al-Aqsa.”
- Another resident said: “People here won’t sit quietly, they will continue to respond. We will make the lives of the Jews difficult everywhere.”
And how did Israelis respond to that atrocity?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the demolitions of the homes of the attackers.
The blunt truth was that Palestinians had no interest in preventing such attacks on Israeli citizens—because Israel hadn’t given them any.
Blowing up houses only takes out anger on lifeless buildings. Those who lived there are still alive—and able to seek revenge in the future.
As Niccolo Machiavelli once warned:
…Above all [a ruler] must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance.
But there was an alternative which Israelis could have considered.
To instill a sense of civic responsibility—however begrudgingly—in their Islamic citizens: Every time such an atrocity occurred, Israel could have deported at least 10,000 Arabs from its territory.
Suddenly, Arabs living in Israel would have had real incentive for preventing such attacks against Israelis. Or at least for reporting to police the intentions of those they knew were planning such attacks.
“Hey,” they would have thought, “if Abdul blows up that police station like he said he wants to, I could get sent to a refugee camp.”
It’s extremely likely there would have been s sudden rush of Arab informants to Israeli police stations.
Machiavelli, the 15th century Florentine statesmen, carefully studied both war and politics. In his most famous—or infamous—work, The Prince, he advises:
Niccolo Machiavelli
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.
And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.
And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Machiavelli knew—and warned—that while it was useful to avoid hatred, it was fatal to be despised.
And he also warned that humility toward insolent enemies only encourages their hatred and contempt.
Accompanying this is the advice of perhaps the greatest general of the American Civil War: William Tecumseh Sherman.
Sherman, whose army cut a swath of destruction through the South in 1864, said it best. Speaking of the Southern Confederacy, he advised:
“They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
Israelis will never be able to make its sworn Islamic enemies love them. But they can instill such a healthy fear in most of them that such atrocities as the synagogue butchery and settlement attacks will become a rarity.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2024 at 12:05 am
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
—Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”
Hope Hicks served in President Donald Trump’s administration as White House Director of Strategic Communication from January to September, 2017.
Today she’s a prominent witness at his trial for concealing hush money payments in 2016 to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels.
On January 6, 2021, Hicks had a problem: She feared she might never work again.
From 2017 to 2018 she served as White House Communications Director. After leaving the White House, she returned to serve as Counselor to the President from 2020 to 2021.
Hope Hicks
And then came the Trump-inspired attack on Congress on January 6.
Among the infamies and crimes Trump committed—and Hicks witnessed—during his four years as President:
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Giving highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
- Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus.
- Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
- Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
- Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joe Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.
So Hope had plenty to feel tormented about.
Yet it wasn’t any of these offenses that upset her.
It was something far more personal: She feared that the public’s association of her with Trump’s attack on Congress would doom her, at age 32, to permanent unemployment.
On January 6, 2021, she exchanged a series of texts with Julie Radford, First Daughter Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff.
HICKS: “In one day he [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys [sic] chapter
“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed
“I’m so mad and upset
“We all look like domestic terrorists now”
RADFORD: “Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour”
HICKS: “This made us all unemployable
“Like untouchable
“God I’m so fucking mad”
RADFORD: “I know there isn’t a chance of finding a job
“Visa also sent me a blow off email today
“Already”
HICKS: “Nope. Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked.
[Referring to Trump]: “Attacking the VP [Vice President Mike Pence]?
“Wtf is wrong with him”
Albert Speer, former architect and Minister of Armaments for his late Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, would have fully empathized.
Albert Speer
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146II-277 / Binder / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
With the collapse of the Third Reich, he found himself hurled from power and facing trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg.
His prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, said: “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.”
Yet Speer falsely claimed he had simply been an apolitical architect who had been drafted into serving as Minister of Armaments—and hadn’t known about the Holocaust.
The prosecution couldn’t prove he had. So he escaped a death sentence—and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Emerging from prison in 1966, Speer lamented that no architectural firm in postwar Germany would hire “Hitler’s architect.”
So he spent the rest of his life writing—at great profit—about his 12 years as a high-ranking official in the Third Reich. As “The Good Nazi,” he portrayed himself as a political innocent deceived into hell by a Mephistopheles-like Hitler.
Like Speer, Hope Hicks has repudiated her own former Fuhrer—after serving him during his worst infamies.
And, like Speer, she isn’t facing the dangers of poverty. Her net worth is estimated at $1 million, owing to her past work as a model and public relations agent.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 23, 2024 at 12:10 am
….A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good. And therefore it is necessary, for a prince who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.
—Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice to President Joseph Biden in “The Prince”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Republicans, having won control of the House of Representatives, are eagerly seeking to destroy whatever legacy President Joseph R. Biden hopes to leave.
Intending to abuse their new-found powers to the utmost, their topmost goals include:
- Bringing false impeachment charges against Biden;
- Investigating FBI officials who rightly investigated evidence of Donald Trump’s collaboration with Russia;
- Investigating the President’s son, Hunter, for unspecified offenses, to damage his father’s credibility; and
- Holding America’s economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden makes cuts in taxes and aid programs for the poor and middle class.
Yet their dictatorial ambitions—lavishly funded by Russian “campaign contributions” (i.e., bribes)—can be thwarted.
Two methods for achieving this have already been discussed in Part one of this series:
- Attack Republicans as traitors selling out the country to Vladimir Putin, and
- Concede NOTHING to Republicans
Here are two more:
Counterattack Strategy #3: Open Senate Investigations on the Trumps
House Republicans have ruthlessly attacked Biden’s son, Hunter, to damage the President’s credibility.
“What’s on Hunter’s laptop?” has become their latest version of “Who promoted Peress?”
Irving Peress was a New York City dentist who became a primary target for Red-baiting Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings.
Democrats can effectively blunt this attack: Senatorial Democrats can hold similar investigative hearings on the actions of Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump during their father’s White House tenure.
Both were highly involved with President Trump’s finances during his four years in office. And Trump never hesitated to violate the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.
United States Constitution
Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8 prohibits federal office holders from receiving gifts, payments, or anything of value from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives.
The Founders wanted to ensure that the country’s leaders would not be corrupted, even unconsciously, through bribes. At that time, bribery was a common practice among European rulers and diplomats.
Trump encouraged diplomats, lobbyists and insiders to stay at his Washington, D.C. hotel—which lay only a short walk from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
And the prices charged there weren’t cheap:
- Cocktails ran from $23 for a gin and tonic to $100 for a vodka concoction with raw oysters and caviar.
- A seafood pyramid called “the Trump Tower” cost $120.
- A salt-aged Kansas City strip steak cost $59.
It’s a certainty that Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., oversaw the profits sheet for this hotel—and other Trump properties across the country visited by members of foreign governments.
Thus, there are legitimate avenues for investigation open to Senatorial subcommittees—just as Robert F. Kennedy once probed financial ties between the Mafia and the International Brother of Teamsters Union.
The Justice Department might even be persuaded to launch its own investigation—not only into possible financial corruption during the Trump administration but into widespread reports of cocaine use by Donald, Jr.
Donald Trump, Jr.
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The House cannot bring criminal penalties against anyone. But the Justice Department can.
Counterattack Strategy #4: Open Justice Department Investigations on Congress members who supported Trump’s 2020 Coup Attempt
After Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 Presidential election, 17 Republican state Attorney Generals—and 126 Republican members from both houses of Congress—supported a Texas lawsuit to overturn the results in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
This was nothing less than a Right-wing coup attempt to overturn the results of a legitimate election. As a result, every one of these men and women can be legitimately indicted for treason—provided the Biden Justice Department has has the courage to do so.
Had the Justice Department brought such indictments in 2021 or 2022, the Republican party would now be facing legal and financial ruin. There is still time to do this.
Even if some of its members escape conviction, they will be forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to stay out of prison.
And those who are convicted and sent to prison will serve notice on to the Right of the dangers of treason and abuse of power.
For decades, Republicans have turned Carl von Clausewitz’ famous dictum—“War is the continuation of politics by other means”—on its head: “Politics is a continuation of war by other means.”
That strategy has given the United States Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, George W. Bush, Donald Trump—and a Republican Congress willing to destroy the country it claims to love.
By contrast, Democrats have too often adhered to the Michelle Obama mantra: “When they go low, we go high.”
That strategy has allowed Republicans to give the United States needless wars, an exploding national debt and the near destruction of democracy.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2024 at 12:17 am
It took 15 voting tries—and a series of humiliating concessions—for Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.
All of the concessions he made were to the most Right-wing members of the House. And all of those members are fanatically dedicated to destroying whatever legacy President Joseph R. Biden hopes to leave.
At the top of their list: Impeaching Biden.
Republicans refused to impeach and convict Donald Trump after he incited a deadly riot against the United States Capitol Building. But they’re eager to remove Biden for what they consider the most impeachable offense of all.
He defeated a Republican candidate for President.
President Joseph Biden
And not just any Republican candidate: The candidate who had made no secret of his desire to be “President-for-Life.”
During the 2022 mid-term elections, Republicans had expected to sweep both the House and Senate. This would have given them virtual control of the government.
The House is the body that initiates revenue bills and impeaches federal officials. And the Senate holds the power to confirm Presidential appointments that require consent, and to provide advice and consent to ratify treaties.
But Democrats went on a rare offensive and rightly attacked Republicans as trying to gain absolute control over the lives of their fellow Americans. And voters rejected the candidates favored by Trump for local and federal offices.
Thus, Republicans had to settle for controlling the House.
Even so, they intended to abuse their new-found powers to the utmost. Among their topmost goals:
- Bringing false impeachment charges against President Biden;
- Investigating FBI officials who rightly investigated evidence of Donald Trump’s collaboration with Russia;
- Investigating the President’s son, Hunter, for unspecified offenses, to damage his father’s credibility; and
- Holding America’s economy hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden makes cuts in taxes and aid programs for the poor and middle class.
Hunter Biden
Center for Strategic & International Studies, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
If Democrats follow their usual mantra of “When they go low, we go high,” they will cower before Republican aggression and sacrifice their legislative agenda.
Yet they can snatch victory from the jaws of impending defeat—providing they are willing to follow the advice Robert F. Kennedy offered for combating the Mafia: “If we do not attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as effective as their own, they will destroy us.”
Counterattack Strategy #1: Attack Republicans as traitors selling out the country to Vladimir Putin
Numerous Republicans have taken “campaign contributions”—i.e., bribes—from Russian oligarchs linked to Putin.
One Russian oligarch—Len Blavatnik—has given millions of dollars to top Republican leaders—such as Senators Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Marco Rubio (Florida) and Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).
In just 2017, Blavatnik contributed the following to GOP Political Action Committees (PACs):
- $1.5 million to PACs associated with Rubio.
- $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.
- $1 million to McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund.
- $3.5 million to a PAC associated with McConnell.
- $1.1 million to Unintimidated PAC, associated with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
- $250,000 to New Day for America PAC, associated with Ohio Governor John Kasich.
- $800,000 to the Security is Strength PAC, associated with Senator Lindsey Graham.
The Biden administration need not ask the CIA or FBI to unearth these contributions. They can be easily found within the files of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Putin’s monies have been well-spent: About 90 House Republicans—out of a total of 213—attended Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress on December 21, 2022, according to CQ Roll Call. Some who did spent much of the speech on their phones.
Many Republicans—such as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who in 2021 received about $255,000 from Blavatnik—have openly threatened to end all funding for Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russian aggression.
Kevin McCarthy
Attacking Republicans as Communist traitors would prove an effective technique. From the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Republicans successfully attacked Democrats as at least potential sellouts, if not actual traitors.
The advantage of attacking Russian-bribed Republicans today is that even some “Reagan Republicans”—such as James Kirchick, a conservative reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist—have openly denounced this treason.
Thus, the White House could ignite an internal conflict within the Right by pitting Republicans against each other.
Counterattack Strategy #2: Concede NOTHING to Republicans
Donald Trump shut down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to finance his useless border wall against Mexico.
So Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi shut down his State of the Union appearance.
As CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza noted: “What Pelosi seems to understand better than past Trump political opponents is that giving ANY ground is a mistake. You have to not only stand firm, but be willing to go beyond all political norms—like canceling the SOTU—to win.”
His ego strung, Trump reopened the government.
And with Republicans threatening to not raise the debt ceiling unless their extortionate demands are met, the White House can effectively counter this danger:
Deduct from the budget every dollar directed toward Republican states. This would vastly reduce the size of the Federal budget, since subsidizing these failed economies accounts for a substantial portion of the budget.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2024 at 12:09 am
You can’t understand what’s happening in Texas—and other states where abortion is now banned as a crime—without knowing the story of Pavlik Morozov.
Pavel Trofimovich Morozov—better known by the diminutive Pavlik—was born on November 14, 1918. Until his 13th birthday, he did nothing to win the status of a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Then his chance came—in 1932, at the height of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s campaign to confiscate the grain of millions of Soviet peasants.
Stalin intended to convert the backward Soviet Union into a major industrial power within a decade. Central to this: Turning land privately farmed by peasants into collective farms which would be “great factories of grain.”
Morozov was a dedicated Communist who led the Young Pioneers at his school and supported Stalin’s forced collections policies.
In 1932, at the age of 13, Morozov reported his father, Trofim, to the political police, the GPU—the forerunner to the KGB.
According to one account,, Trofim, the chairman of the Gerasimovka Village Soviet, had been “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State” (as the sentence read).
Another account charges him with hoarding grain.
Pavlik Morozov
Trofim Morozov was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. There his sentence was changed to execution, which was carried out.
On September 3, 1932, Pavlik’s infuriated uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother.
Only the uncle escaped arrest by the GPU’s sentence to “the highest measure of social defense”—execution by a firing squad.
Soviet authorities quickly turned Pavlik Morozov into a Communist martyr. He became a subject for readings, plays, songs, a symphonic poem, a full-length opera and no fewer than six biographies.
The goal of these efforts: To encourage other Soviet children to inform on their parents.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to 2024 America—and the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Court’s historic decision legalizing abortion in 1973.
For Right-wing states dominated by Republican governors and/or legislatures, it isn’t enough to forbid women in their states to get abortions. They insist on preventing them from terminating their pregnancies (even in cases of rape and/or incest) in states where abortion is legal.
And key to making this a reality is turning America into a nation of Pavlik Morozovs.
Even before the Supreme Court handed down its infamous decision, Missouri gave the nation a foretaste of what was to come.
A first-of-its-kind proposal from Missouri lawmakers allowed private citizens to sue anyone who helped a Missouri resident obtain an abortion.
This included the out-of-state physician who performed the procedure to whoever helped transport a person across state lines to a clinic.
Republican state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman admitted that her measure specifically targeted a Planned Parenthood clinic in Illinois just across the river from St. Louis that opened in 2019 with the stated goal of serving Missouri patients.
Mary Elizabeth Coleman
“If you believe as I do that every person deserves dignity and respect and protection whether they’re born or unborn, then of course you want to protect your citizens, no matter where they are,” Coleman told POLITICO.
“If a Missouri resident is hurt, even in Illinois, by a product that they bought in Illinois, there is still jurisdiction for them to sue in a Missouri court because that’s home for them … and this is extending that same kind of thought to abortion jurisprudence.”
This totally ignores the huge difference between unknowingly buying a defective product that causes harm and knowingly seeking a medical procedure.
Abortion pills—now the most popular method of terminating a pregnancy in the United States—are also a target of Republican-dominated legislatures.
Several states—including Texas—have moved to ban prescribing the drugs via telemedicine and sending them by mail to people’s homes. Many others are looking to implement similar bans in the wake of the Biden administration’s move to loosen restrictions on the pills.
Anti-abortion-rights activists claim they can’t eliminate all abortions without deterring travel across state lines. They blame pro-choice advocates who are raising money to help people terminate a pregnancy in another state.
“You have a very aggressive industry working on helping people circumvent pro-life laws,” said Kristi Hamrick with Students for Life of America, which has chapters lobbying for restrictions in all 50 states. “So the conversation in Missouri and other locations is in direct response to that.”
In post-Roe America, a woman’s cell phone can also become her legal undoing.
Digital period tracking apps could be used against them. As a result, many experts advise removing them from cell phones.
More than 100 million women use period tracking applications. They help predict the date of the next period, the ovulation period, and track the signs of premenstrual syndrome. Dozens of applications are available.
And if you want to talk about abortion online in Texas, remember: Doing so on Facebook or Twitter could hurt you.
Texas residents could find themselves in legal hot water for sharing a Facebook or Twitter post on how to get an abortion or holding an online fundraiser for someone seeking one.
Thus Texans, who have long prided themselves on their independence from authority, have become a state filled with informers hoping to get rich quick by informing on their fellow citizens.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on April 5, 2024 at 12:13 am
To understand Republicans’ behavior, you need to understand the word “projection.”
As defined by psychologists, “projection” means unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don’t like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.
Except that, with Republicans, there is nothing unconscious about attributing their own evil intentions and/or actions to those they hate.
To cite a current example: “Weaponizing” is a word now in vogue among Republicans. As in: “By appointing a Special Counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice (DOJ) proves that Democrats have weaponized Federal law enforcement.”
Republicans conveniently refuse to say why the Justice Department appointed former DOJ official Jack Smith to that position: Because, before leaving the White House, Trump shipped more than 300 highly classified documents in 15 boxes to his estate in Mar-a-Lago.
Jack Smith
As an ex-President, he had no right to possess any of these documents.
Moreover, he not only illegally took these documents, he lied to government investigators that he had done so. It took an August 8, 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve them.
Then there’s the matter of the January 6, 2021 defendants.
They are so named because, on that date, Trump incited his followers to violently attack the United States Capitol Building. Their goal: To prevent Republicans and Democrats from counting the Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election.
Trump fully understood that an accurate count of those votes would reveal his loss to former Vice President Joe Biden: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump.
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.
Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers
- Approximately 140 police officers were assaulted.
- A gallows was erected in front of the Capitol.
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents or lead pipes.
- Improvised explosive devices were found in several locations in Washington, D.C.
- A Capitol Hill police officer was knocked off his feet, dragged into the mob surging toward the building, and beaten with the pole of an American flag.
- Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages.
- Others carried treasonous Confederate flags.
- Blue-and-white TRUMP flags floated above the crowd.
- Shouts of “Hang [Vice President Mike Pence!” often rang out.
- Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
Stormtrumpers inside the Capitol Building
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
By December, 2023, 728 participants in the coup attempt had pleaded guilty. Another 166 defendants had been convicted at trial; a total of 745 defendants have been sentenced.
Yet Republicans—most notably Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)—have depicted these coup supporters as persecuted martyrs.
On March 24, 2022, members of the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee toured a Washington, D.C. jail where some of these defendants were held.
“Their due process rights are being violated. And they have been mistreated and treated as political prisoners,” Greene told reporters after the tour.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), another member of the tour, exchanged hugs with with Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt had been shot by police as she forced her way into the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering in place.
Republicans‘ fixation on “weaponization” centers on the Trump’s facing 91 criminal offenses in four criminal cases.
These relate to Trump’s
- Attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election
- Election interference in Georgia
- Falsifying business records in New York, and
- Mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency.
Donald Trump is the first former president in American history to be criminally indicted.
For Republicans, prosecutors’ daring to hold Trump accountable for his litany of crimes amounts to “election interference.” As if winning office through the efforts of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has conferred “untouchable” status upon him.
As a result, Republicans have made unprecedented efforts to undermine these prosecutions.
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., a Trump ally who sits on the Appropriations Committee, introduced two amendments to eliminate federal funding for all three of Trump’s prosecutors—Special Counsel Jack Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is also trying to cut off funding for Smith’s office.
Republicans have in the past championed “states’ rights” against “federal overreach.” But now that their former President finds himself facing the consequences of his own criminality, they are eager to abort state-level prosecutions.
At the same time, they slander President Joseph Biden as “weaponizing” the Justice Department against his political rival.
In George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, the dictatorship ruling Oceania offers the following slogan for its citizens:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Republicans would have Americans believe
- The attempted overturning of a legitimate Presidential election was an act of patriotism;
- An ex-President taking classified materials to which he had no right was entirely justified; and
- Donald Trump has an absolute right to commit any crime he desires.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 4, 2024 at 12:14 am
The electoral success of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting treason slanders proved too alluring for other Republicans to resist.
Joseph McCarthy
Among those who have greatly profited from hurling similar charges are:
- President Richard Nixon
- His vice president, Spiro Agnew
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
- Former Congressman Dick Armey
- President George W. Bush
- Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin
- Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann
- Rush Limbaugh
- Sean Hannity
- Bill O’Reilly.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
George H.W. Bush
After losing the White House to Clinton at the polls in 1992 and 1996, Republicans tried to oust him another way: By impeaching him over a tryst with a penis-loving intern named Monica Lewinsky.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach, but the effort was defeated in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.
Barack Obama
Almost immediately after Obama took office, he came under attack by an industry of right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
The following titles vividly reveal the hates, fears and ambitions of their authors—and audience:
- Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity
- Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation by Jason Mattera
- How Barack Obama is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy by Stephen Moore
- Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism by Sean Hannity
- The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists,Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein
- The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency by Ken Blackwell
- Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Croniesby Michelle Malkin
- Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer
- To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
- Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One by Joshua Muravchik
- How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections by John Fund
- Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policicies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by Christopher C. Horner
- The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warning Agenda by Roy W. Spencer
- America’s March to Socialism: Why We’re One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades by Glenn Beck
- Obama’s Betrayal of Israel by Michael Ledeen
- The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality by Jerome R. Corsi
- The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso
- Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio by Brian Jennings
- The War On Success: How the Obama Agenda Is Shattering the American Dream by Tommy Newberry
- Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them by Steven Milloy
- Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions by Michael Savage
- Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
- How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter
- Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter
- If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans by Ann Coulter
- Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter
- Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress and the Special Interests Are Transforming…a Slump into a Crash, Freedom Into Socialism and a Disaster into a Catastrophe….And How to Fight Back by Dick Morris
Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:
“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”
And while the Right lusts to constantly compare Democrats and liberals (the two aren’t always the same) to Adolf Hitler, its propaganda campaign draws heavily on the Nazi leader’s own advice.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
“[The masses] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”
Thus, Republicans spent the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency repeating the lie that he was born in Kenya—not Hawaii, as the long-form version of his birth certificate attests.
The reason: To “prove” that he was an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office.
To Republicans’ dismay, their slander campaign didn’t prevent Obama from being elected in 2008—and re-elected in 2012.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 3, 2024 at 12:16 am
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, radicalized and indivisible.”
So wrote Rolling Stone writer in a blistering June 19, 2015 editorial. The touchstone was the slaughter of nine black worshipers by a white supremacist at a South Carolina black church.
But the proof of Republican culpability in political violence goes back much further.
Consider:
Gabrille Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly wins re-election in November, 2010, against a Republican Tea Party candidate.
Her support of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law has made her a target for violent rhetoric–-especially from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
In March, 2010, Palin releases a map featuring 20 House Democrats that uses cross-hairs images to show their districts. In case her supporters don’t get the message, she later writes on Twitter: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”
Sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” Map
As the campaign continues, Giffords finds her Tucson office vandalized after the House passes the healthcare overhaul in March.
Giffords senses that she has become a target for removal—in more than political terms. In an interview after the vandalizing of her office, she refers to the animosity against her by conservatives.
She specifically cites Palin’s decision to list her seat as one of the top “targets” in the midterm elections.
“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords tells MSNBC.
At one of her rallies, her aides call the police after an attendee drops a gun.
Giffords may have seen the spectre of violence closing in on her. In April, 2010, she supported Rep. Raúl Grijalva after he had to close two offices when he and his staff received threats.
Raúl Grijalva
He had called for a boycott of Arizona businesses in opposition to the state’s controversial immigration law.
“I am deeply troubled about reports that Congressman Grijalva and members of his staff have been subjected to death threats,” Giffords said.
“This is not how we, as Americans, express our political differences. Intimidation has no place in our representative democracy. Such acts only make it more difficult for us to resolve our differences.”
But intimidation—-and worse—-does have a place among the tactics used by influential Republicans in the pursuit of absolute power.
Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent—-and violence-arousing—-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like Sarah Palin fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
Sarah Palin
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked—-shocked!—that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful—as the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings did—then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
The difference is that, in this case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.
Consider the following:
- Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) yelled “baby killer” at Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor.
- Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West, referring to his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ron Klein, told Tea Party activists: You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
- Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tea Partiers had “every right” to use racist and homophobic slurs against Democrats, justifying it via Democrats’ “totalitarian tactics.”
- Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration.
- Sarah Palin told her supporters: “Get in their face and argue with them. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!”
- Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) “We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
- Rep. Louisa M. Slauter (D-NY) received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.
Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence–by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetime.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 2, 2024 at 12:10 am
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
At 21, Roof was unemployed, dividing his time between playing video games and taking drugs.
Dylann Roof
The signs of Roof’s malignant racism were evident long before he turned mass murderer:
- He had posed for a photo sitting on the hood of his parents’ car—whose license plate bore a Confederate flag.
- He had posed for pictures wearing a jacket sporting the white supremacist flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
- He told a friend that he hoped “to start a civil war” between the black and white races.
- Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people.
- In the midst of his massacre of unarmed worshipers, he told one of his victims: “You’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country.” Then Roof shot him.
The evidence made clear that Roof’s slaughter was racially motivated. Yet no 2016 Republican Presidential candidate dared acknowledge it:
- Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida: “I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes.”
- Rick Santorum, former United States Senator from Pennsylvania: “You talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we’re now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we’ve never seen before. It’s a time for deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation.”
- Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana: “I don’t think we’ll ever know what was going on in his mind.”
But Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund left no doubt as to what—and who—was ultimately responsible for this crime: Racism and Republicans.
In a June 19, 2015 editorial—published two days after the massacre—Lund noted: “This [crime] is political because American movement conservatism has already made these kinds of killings political.
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it.
“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
On December 15, 2016, Dylann Roof was convicted of 33 Federal hate crime charges. On January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death. He remains on Death Row to this day.
Yet the leadership of the Republican party whose hate-filled rhetoric inspired Root escaped indictment—and even widespread condemnation.
The evidence that Republicans have weaponized hatred—with deadly results—was on display long before Dylann Roof opened fire on “uppity blacks” praying in their own church.
Consider:
On January 8, 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. After a miraculous recovery, she continues to struggle with language and has lost 50% of her vision in both eyes.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
She vowed to return to her former Congressional duties, but was forced to resign for health reasons in 2012.
Giffords was only one victim of a shooting spree that claimed the lives of six people and left 13 others wounded.
Also killed was Arizona’s chief U.S. District judge, John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after celebrating Mass.
Although the actual shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was immediately arrested, those who fanned the flames of political violence that consumed 19 people that day have remained unpunished.
Consider the circumstances behind the shootings:
John Roll is Arizona’s chief federal judge. Appointed in 2006, he wins acclaim as a respected jurist and leader who pushes to beef up the court’s strained bench to handle a growing number of border crime-related cases.
In 2009, he becomes a target for threats after allowing a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit by illegal aliens to proceed against a local rancher. The case arouses the fury of local talk radio hosts, who encourage their audiences to threaten Roll’s life.
In one afternoon, Roll logs more than 200 threatening phone calls. Callers threaten the judge and his family. They post personal information about Roll online.
Roll and his wife are placed under fulltime protection by deputy U.S. marshals. Roll finds living under security “unnerving and invasive.”
Authorities identify four men believed responsible for the threats. But Roll declines to press charges on the advice of the Marshals Service.
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STANDING UP TO TYRANTS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2024 at 1:22 amAfter taking office as President, Donald Trump openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
FBI headquarters
Among his attacks on federal law enforcers:
But the FBI could have refused to meekly accept such assaults.
A February 2, 2022 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offered a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.
A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.
Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.
Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.
MENDEZ: I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.
REAGAN: I do not.
MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.
REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.
MENDEZ: We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.
Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office. Later, he returns:
MENDEZ: We’ve got a serious problem.
REAGAN: Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.
MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.
REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.
MENDEZ: What are you going to do?
REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.
MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.
REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.
MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.
At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.
MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?
REAGAN: No.
MENDEZ: Bad news.
REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.
MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.
REAGAN: He was with a married woman.
MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.
REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.
MENDEZ: Sheesh!
REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.
MENDEZ: So what are we doing?
REAGAN: If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].
MENDEZ: Who else knows?
REAGAN: Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.
MENDEZ: Your judgment?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?
REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.
MENDEZ: I have your word on that?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.
J. Edgar Hoover
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.
Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Yet he didn’t file a single slander suit.
Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.
Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.
“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”
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