Posted on 02/07/2018 7:34:58 AM PST by Liberty7732
Unfolding events in Washington, D.C. are leaving a lot of Americans wondering where they can turn in such a deeply corrupted, self-absorbed government to get justice and protect the republic. There are actually a few options in these new and uncharted times, and at least one would be groundbreaking.
But first, heres the corruption we now know was going on in the Obama Administration and during the presidential election:
➜ The Obama Administration clearly weaponized the most fearsome of government agencies, the Internal Revenue Service, against individual Americans and American companies who were political opponents of President Obama. The targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups by the politicized Internal Revenue Service was an explosive scandal that somehow most of the media dozed through, disinterested in pursuing. Democrats worked to obfuscate and dilute the scandal and at that point, the media woke up and helped in reporting the talking points. And all this began after a top IRS official admitting exactly what they had done. And yet, no consequences. Not one person lost their job or a penny of income.
➜ The Fast and Furious gun-running scandal to Mexican cartels was bad enough. But then Obama Attorney General Eric Holder took another step in corruption by so completely refusing to cooperate with Congress, that he was found in criminal contempt. Holder was the first member of a presidents cabinet in history to be held in contempt. Democrats of course circled the wagons and protected him while the media played it as nothing more than partisan political theater helpfully using Holders phrase. Nothing ever happened to Holder as the White House played defense for him.
➜ There are half a dozen other major corruption scandals during the Obama years that would warrant mention but have already been meticulously covered by the conservative media. The mainstream media is happy to blather about the most scandal-free presidency in history. The point is made that during those eight years, there were several scandals for which there was never an accounting. And of course, there is no oversight (and cannot be any oversight) of the media, even a dishonestly partisan media. Thats the First Amendment.
➜ In December, Politico published a strong piece of investigative journalism that was not only astonishing in the news it broke, but was robust with sources. The story exposed how the Obama administration had secretly dumped U.S. law enforcement efforts to nail a drug-trafficking ring run by the terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an ally of Iran and one of the reasons the country is considered a terrorist nation. Killing the American action was done to placate the Iranians to help get the awful nuclear deal in place. But the same formula applied. Democrats played defense and the remainder of the media ignored. Like, really ignored. Several days after the Politico story, neither ABC News, CBS News or NBC News had done one second on the story. Major newspapers ignored it, also. Good for Politico, but a pox on the rest of them. Of course, no consequences from this horrible betrayal of us and our ally, Israel.
➜ This brings us to the most recent breathtaking revelations of high-level FBI corruption during the 2016 presidential campaign and after President Trumps inauguration through coordinated actions with the DNC, a British spy and Russians to deceive a FISA judge repeatedly to obtain eavesdropping warrants on members of the Trump campaign. This one continues to unfold, but even considering how bad some of the others are, this is the worst and most dangerous if it is as it looks to be. And it looks very much like leading portions of the FBI, we know some but we may not know all, were actively working with one political party and a foreign power, through a Washington opposition research firm, to influence an American election and later undermine the winner of that election.
This level of corruption is a direct assault on our democratic republic, on the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and on the American people.
Based on the ongoing revelations in the growing dirty laundry list, and on Americans dwindling sense of trust in our own government, a basic question arises:
Where do the American people go to get justice?
This is actually really difficult to answer. The frontline agency that should be tasked with the investigations is the FBI, which is part of the Department of Justice within the presidential executive branch. But the FBI, or some parts of the FBI, are compromised and so entrusting the agency with an investigation that includes and centers on investigating itself, seems like a non-starter.
The obvious possibility is appointing one or more Special Counsels to investigate the investigators. This has the inherent downside of relying on the FBI as the investigative arm, plus they are constitutionally dubious and it would be cast as just Trump politics. Still, it is a possibility.
Another possibility is that perhaps a special task force from the federal governments various Inspector Generals offices could be created and augmented by private investigators who obtain the proper security clearances. Or Congress could create a task force itself using private investigators in the same way.
Or, perhaps there is at least one more option.
A consortium of states. This goes old-school Constitution, but originally, the idea was that the federal government would be kept in check by the various states, to whom it was beholden.
In Federalist 39, James Madison wrote regarding the approving the Constitution:
It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a national but a federal act.
This view, representative of the founders, was that the states had the authority and responsibility to check the federal government. Of course, it has been turned on its head, but compared to most countries, the individual states making up the United States still hold considerable autonomy and authority.
If multiple federal agencies, including the leading investigative federal agency, are corruptly infested, then really the only outside solution lies with the states. They could create a unified investigative task force, obtain security clearances through the White House, conduct in-depth, investigations using their own and Congressional subpoena powers and bring charges to the Department of Justice to decide if indictments were warranted. There could potentially be dozens of states with the political gumption to undertake this.
This is way outside the box. But probably not unconstitutional. We are in uncharted territory and the house needs to be cleaned. It might be just the solution needed.
But regardless of the direction taken, the American people can no longer stand to the side and watch the country be undone by a mischievous, nefarious deep state working against the nations interests. Such corruption cannot stand.
I used to do process reviews and quality re-engineering.
One of the things we found is that most basic processes would work fine if people simply followed the rules. After years of lax management the discipline to follow the rules would fall by the wayside. Shortcuts and personnel avoidance cause processes to slip from where they should be.
When you enforce the rules that are in place, usually you will get good performance. THEN you can start making improvements.
What people are trying to do here is change a process based on bad management. That is a bad place to start.
A friend of mine was told by an FBI field agent that just the Clinton Whitewater investigation was so big that there would be no prosecution because it would take every field agent in the FBI to run the leads to ground.
Alynski - go big or go home. Overwhelm the resources to create stalemate.
Remember though, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Start rolling away the weakest links at the bottom. They have not the resources to successfully stall nor can they call in favors. It only takes ONE:
One honest investigator
One honest prosecutor
One honest judge
To all in the know with the power to act, Are You The One? Your nation is waiting..........
Yes, peace is always preferable to conflict. And less dangerous.
You are absolutely right.
When do you think the States will get together and petition the Congress to call a convention?
Taking shortcuts is a behavioral cause. Lax management enforcement of process compliance might be a systemic cause if the fix were to reinforce the importance of process compliance and put consequences on management for lack of process discipline. However, in this case management was not lax in oversight, they were also complicit actors in avoiding the process. This is still behavioral, so the systemic root cause is not yet found.
I'm suggesting that the systemic root cause is the "independent" nature of the FBI itself. This was magnified by the behavioral causes that top management felt they were unaccountable to anyone, and that a single ideological mindset became established through years of political appointments that controlled the hiring practices of lower-level staff. Using management reinforcement to correct the root cause is ineffective given that management is a part of the problem. Therefore, we must look at the protective systems for corrections.
One protective system is the Inspector General. While this seems to be working now, in hindsight it doesn't seem to have been effective at the time the actions were taking place. When the bad actors are the top management itself in a department, an IG is too easily bypassed. Therefore, a new protective system must be put in place.
My proposed corrective system is to replace a federal-centric FBI with a state-centric investigative agency. This agency would have distributed leadership, since by following the militia model in the Constitution, the "officers" would be selected by the states and would be subject to recall at the whim of the home state. A single monolithic mindset cannot become entrenched, since concerned states can replace their officers at any time.
I suggested attaching this investigative militia to the Commander-In-Chief directly, with some provision for a senior officer hierarchy to manage 50 separate state contingents, but I'm open to other ideas.
-PJ
I’m not confident at all that there will ever be a COS.
There are too many potential bottlenecks along the way of accumulating supporting states. A few bribes for the right people at the right time could derail everything, I have Speakers of the state assemblies and committee chairmen in mind. I’m sure there are other means I’m not aware of.
But regardless, we must press on!!
Right.
I and a few of my friends are trying to talk up Article 5, and have been for some time. It is sometimes a uphill battle, as you know.
Nobody wants things to come to something uncivil.
Therefore, as you stated, we press on.
"Or, perhaps there is at least one more option.
A consortium of states. This goes old-school Constitution, but originally, the idea was that the federal government would be kept in check by the various states, to whom it was beholden.
In Federalist 39, James Madison wrote regarding the approving the Constitution:
It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a national but a federal act.
This view, representative of the founders, was that the states had the authority and responsibility to check the federal government. Of course, it has been turned on its head, but compared to most countries, the individual states making up the United States still hold considerable autonomy and authority.
If multiple federal agencies, including the leading investigative federal agency, are corruptly infested, then really the only outside solution lies with the states. They could create a unified investigative task force, obtain security clearances through the White House, conduct in-depth, investigations using their own and Congressional subpoena powers and bring charges to the Department of Justice to decide if indictments were warranted. There could potentially be dozens of states with the political gumption to undertake this."
There are 29 Republican Attorney Generals. As others have alluded, I also think an emergency meeting of the 29 State Attorney Generals to think tank a possible solution as alluded above.
The only way this is going to be competently investigated and prosecuted is from outside the Beltway sources. I hope they are on the phones as I write this. If this works, it will also catapult more awareness of a Convention of States.
Bttt.
5.56mm
All right, you’ve generated a piece of paper. Now how are you going to enforce it?
Pieces of paper are written for gentlemen who have a goal of honoring them for a more general good.
We are long past dealing with gentlemen.
Beyond lawsuits by State AGs, do State National Guards have intelligence/investigative arms?
For sure. The very structure of the Framers’ plan was a check on accumulating power. As history since 1913 has shown, the senate of the states was the keystone to free government. Pull it, and in time, the whole thing falls apart.
As our institutions currently exist, I have little confidence that Obama, Holder, Comey, . . . etc. will face justice.
So yes, I think you are on to something.
flr
“Im not confident at all that there will ever be a COS.”
Thanks for that small bit of reality, from post 25.
I believe in this comment number 31 you are talking about the seventeenth amendment to the Constitution, which we both agree is key to restoring Constitutional Government. The seventeenth turned Senators from representing States, to Representatives of the People, when we already had sufficient Representatives of the people with two year terms. After 1913 and passage of the Progressive 17 Amendment, we had forced on the American people super representatives with six year terms and no one representing the interest of the States.
Repeal the Seventeenth and we just might have a shot at restoring Government more akin to what the Founders had in mind. In the mean time there are enough folks who don’t trust the COS approach to restoration of Constitutional governance that your statement in number 25 rings true.
South Dakota and Idaho both rejected the COS solution this Legislative Session.
In the original setup, where senators were appointed by the state legislatures, the Senate would have served as the investigative body you propose.
They could be given security clearances and a green light to ‘invade’ the beltway and start the interviews, subpoenas and interrogatories, i.e., a real investigation of real suspects. Also, green light private detectives. As part of the EO, the Task Force would be funded the same way as Mueller's, taxpayer dollars.
When you combine all the legal, law enforcement and forensic talents of 29 states, that's a lot of competent people. I would love to be on that team. I bet a lot of people in flyover country would jump at the chance.
Art, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch summed it up for me when he recently said there is more than enough evidence on Hillary and Obama’s senior FBI/DOJ people to indict them right now, which the DOJ can do. If we want to call them special prosecutors, fine. They have all the evidence they need.
It is past time to stop investigating; it is time to prosecute. Maybe Sessions is waiting for the IG report to back him up. I only suspect that is the situation.
Joe D’Genova would be superb.
We all feel this imbroglio cannot stand and prosecutions have to happen or we are done as a Republic. The team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing would be excellent.
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