Posted on 02/03/2018 7:57:29 AM PST by JP1201
Democrat Adam Schiff might be right that GOP operatives want to derail the Russia probe. But the FBI and Justice Department lost credibility a long time ago.
This is not ancient history or a story about a black-bag job that J. Edgar Hoover ran. It's not even history. But we're not supposed to bring up the deservedly low opinions of the FBI and a Justice Department that have for decades done everything possible to make Americans suspect their employees aren't really trustworthy. The FBI in particular has a long history of abusing its power and the results of that show up in polls mostly showing a massive lack of confidence in it. To the right is a poll from 2016, which tracks with other measures of a broad-based decline in major U.S. institutions. Just one-third of Americans have strong confidence in the FBI, the same awful result that the CIA fetches. The federal government writ large does even worse, as does Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
The author of this is Nick Gillespie.
If you think a New York billionaire with no political experience will win against Hillary Clinton you are not paying attention. /s
The political landscape has changed and many in the media do not understand that change. The New York times is no longer the arbitrator of what is NEWS. Anyone with access to the internet can create a “news site”.
Scandals could be controlled in the past since there was no easy way to exchange information - not true today.
The FBI is a corrupt institution. The people’s faith in it being unbiased has been shattered. Wait until court cases begin to be tossed because lawyers are going to question every bit of evidence presented by the FBI.
They lost the trust of the American people, without that trust their job will get harder. Someone will have to clean house (sort of like when J. Edgar Hoover did when he took it over).
He is correct.
And, insightful.
However, he forgot to place some due blame on the Patriot Act and it’s corrupt spawn, the FISA.
meh
Libertardnian who used to write for a teen mag.....
His vapid analysis is like a bowl of corn flakes left in too much milk for too long
There are simply too many FBI agents. The agency has behaved precisely the way most every federal agency does. They grow for no reason except to satisfy management’s propensity to inflate the org and create more management positions.
It appears that every town in the country with a population of 50K or so has a FBI field office. The FBI is envolved in much to many local and state criminal cases. They should only be envolved in federal crimes.
The Las Vegas massacre is a prime example. At the initial news conference the FBI took over both the conference and the investigation even though at that time no evidence of a federal crime had been established. From that point in time we the public know only what the FBI wants us to know regardless of the desires of the local Las Vegas law enforcement.
Sheriff Joe Arpiao would have never allowed this to happen in his county. This is one of the reasons the Feds hated him. They relentlessly pursued him until they got rid of him. Of course they enjoyed the complicity of the media just like the FBI has regarding their “banana republic” behavior in the FISA scandal.
He’s correct...like a broken clock
Nick Gillespie is editor at large of Reason, the libertarian magazine of “Free Minds and Free Markets.” The two sites draw over 4 million visits per month and have been named among the nation’s best political sites by Playboy, Washingtonian, National Journal, and others. Gillespie is co-author, with his Reason colleague Matt Welch, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America, published in 2011 by Public Affairs (an updated paperback edition was published in 2012).
The Daily Beast, where he now writes a column, named Gillespie one of “The Right’s Top 25 Journalists,” calling him “clear-headed, brainy...[and] among the foremost libertarians in America.” He is a two-time finalist for digital National Magazine Awards for his work on “UPS vs. FEDEX: Ultimate Whiteboard Mix” and the documentary series Reason Saves Cleveland with Drew Carey: How to Fix the Mistake on the Lake and Other Once-Great American Cities.
Gillespie served as Reason magazine’s editor in chief from 2000 to 2008. Under his direction, Reason won the 2005 Western Publications Association “Maggie” Award for Best Political Magazine. Gillespie originally joined Reason’s staff in 1993 as an assistant editor and ascended to the top slot in 2000. In 2004, Gillespie edited the book Choice: The Best of Reason, an anthology of the magazine’s best articles. The Washington Post featured Gillespie’s tenure at Reason magazine, asking, “Which monthly magazine editor argues that the spread of pornography is a victory for free expression? And that drugs from marijuana to heroin should not only be legalized, but using them occasionally is just fine? And is also quite comfortable with gay marriage? The answer is Nick Gillespie, libertarian and doctor of literature, who...is injecting [Reason magazine] with a pop-culture sensibility.”
Gillespie’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, Time.com, Marketplace, and numerous other publications
Once the States are successful with the first limited Article V convention that will propose only one or two amendments it will be much easier to call further conventions and begin reducing the federal government back to it's original Constitutional intent.
This is why is imperative to get this first convention started.
Watch Manafort and Flynn go back to court and challenge the Mueller witch hunt, A judge should throw out their convictions for the fruit of a poisoned tree defense. Then Trump moves in to kill Mueller for the same reason. The memo killed Mueller and his merry band of Hillary supporters. About time.
I posted that because he is not listed at the top of this thread. In fact, no author is listed. That’s all.
Law enforcement agencies (FBI, CIA, police forces) by their very nature are both necessary and dangerous.
They have to have strong independent oversight and like a Rottweiler guard dog, be kept on a short and tight leash.
Who holds that leash is the key.
Good take.
Even Fox ignores clear and compelling evidence and describes the memo as "...purportedly detailing federal surveillance abuses..."
One wonders under what possible interpretation does the memo not detail such abuses?
The comments on the article at Reason are worthwhile, as well.
I think it’s well past time to split the FBI by removing the counter-intelligence function. Either put that function under the Pentagon, or under an independent department. To expect the DoJ and the FBI to make decisions in this area is begging for political interference where national security is involved.
I ain’t so hot about “gay marriage” — but the time may be coming for sex-blind householding of people who may have no interest at all in doing it for the sake of sex. And for marriage to be known as something that churches, not states, do. If my buddy and I were “gay” we could get “gay married” but because we aren’t, there’d be nothing for our situation. Surely that’s upside down.
A situation gone off the rails of what FISA promised Americans.
I think that the DoJ replaces Rosenstein next. Manafort & Flynn get their convictions/Pleas vacated. Then Rosenstein’s replacement takes away the financial resources for the Mueller witch-hunt. Perhaps he’ll just quit.
The big problem with special prosecutors is the open-ended mandate that these guys inevitably claim. It’s great job security.
It also always seems that Republican presidents get saddled with special prosecutors. Other than Clinton, who was impeached, it never seems to happen with Democrats.
At the worst maybe it’s worth 18 jillion dollars to prove Donald kept his nose clean where it really counted and his enemies were a gaggle of irrational haters. But if the spectacle can be cut mercifully short I pray it would be.
The memo plus all the drek that went before.
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