Posted on 06/20/2019 7:44:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
With so much political noise in the air, with President Donald Trump and AOC calling their partisan bannermen to political war, it's almost impossible for Americans to hear themselves think.
But there are two questions we might ask of ourselves:
What does the republic have in common with the Roman Catholic Church?
And what happens if Attorney General William Barr is thwarted in his investigation of the investigators of the Democrats' popular (yet now discredited) theory that President Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to deny the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton?
"If you want to see what happens to institutions that try to cover up and don't come clean and don't really clean house, all you have to do is look at the Catholic church," political scientist and University of Chicago professor emeritus Charles Lipson said on my podcast, "The Chicago Way."
We weren't talking about modern Catholicism and the cover-up of priests sexually abusing children. We were talking about the health of our republic
"They (church leaders) are now doing the right thing, but for years, they didn't," Lipson said. "You need to expose them from the outside, they need to put new people in, however painful that is."
And if they're not exposed?
"If you don't do it, the ordinary people who sit in the pews don't have confidence that their priests, their parish, their bishop, their archbishop have the integrity that they've counted on for generations."
The republic doesn't require complete faith in government. A healthy skepticism will suffice, and that's not only expected, but welcome.
But if the people lose complete faith in their institutions, if they believe that federal law enforcement and the intelligence services are rigged, the way police were rigged as political enforcers years ago by Chicago's City Hall, that becomes a problem.
And if they believe the story won't be fairly told by many in the media who put their thumbs on the scales, what happens then?
History is full of such stories. They all sound the same. They end with lamentations, then silence.
Church attendance and donations are voluntary. I suppose being an American is also voluntary, we're free to leave the way liberal Hollywood actors often threaten to leave (but don't) if Republicans are elected.
Yet there are millions upon millions of us who aren't liberal thespians, and we don't plan on voluntarily leaving the country any time soon.
We are at a critical time: The country is divided, its institutions are weakened if not failing, and mincing bureaucratic cynics run for cover.
The center collapsed, first on the right side of the center circle, and now most definitely on the left.
Trump isn't the cause of this. He's merely the symptom. And those who are too witless to understand, or pretend witlessness so as to herd others for partisan reasons, do no service to their nation.
Most of us need quiet to think things through, but that's almost impossible in this 24/7 news cycle with cable TV news barking like a pack of angry dogs.
We lurch toward armed conflict with Iran as Trump, a pugnacious Republican but no conservative, announces his re-election campaign even while threatening mass deportation of people in the country illegally.
And Democrats scream for impeachment while refusing to abandon their precious yet discredited theory that Trump colluded with Russia; even while ranting hysterically over the president's attempts to control the porous southern border with Mexico.
Chief among these is the stylish socialist spice girl herself, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. AOC compares U.S. immigration policy with the Holocaust.
"I don't use those words lightly," says AOC, "I don't use those words to just throw bombs." Then she used the phrase "concentration camps."
And through all of this, Barr and his Justice Department, including prosecutor John Durham and FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz, are investigating allegations that senior leadership of the FBI and the intelligence community launched a politically motivated probe into the 2016 Trump campaign from the Obama White House.
And for this, Barr has been mercilessly trashed by the Democrats.
Much of the media doesn't seem all that intent on getting the answers or getting to the bottom of things.
Journalists were once rabidly interested at even the whiff of misuse of federal power by the CIA and FBI. And now? The studied indifference is revealing.
But it must be of great comfort to the Kemalists in the deep bureaucratic state.
When Barr was an intern at the CIA some 50 years ago, during the civil rights and Vietnam era, rules were put in place to protect American civil liberties from what we now politely call the "intelligence community."
"The attorney general's responsibility is to make sure that these powers are not used to tread upon First Amendment activity, and that certainly was a big part of my formative years of dealing with those issues," Barr told Jan Crawford of CBS in a recent and riveting interview.
"The fact that today people just seem to brush aside the idea that it is OK to, you know, to engage these activities against a political campaign is stunning to me, especially when the media doesn't seem to think that it's worth looking into," Barr said.
"They're supposed to be the watchdogs of, you know, our civil liberties."
And when they're not, they might as well be preaching to their own choir, in an empty church, with empty pews.
Barr has the right stuff. That said, nobody is moving along at a deliberate pace. IG in hiding. Huber playing games in Salt Lake City. If they haven’t found the information yet they probably won’t. These people need to be locked up. Not running around STILL going after DJT. IMHO
Town Hall and the rest of the useless, corrupt old media arrives at the party - 2 years after the fact. What a joke.
Where were these people when the obvious coup started years ago? It was obvious to *everyone* what was going on, yet periodicals like Town Hall chose to look the other way.
NOW the lazy, corrupt DC cadre of NY/DC "journalist" want to give us their useless, idiotic opinions and insights on everything... after the fact.
“If they haven’t found the information yet they probably won’t.”
Oh they’ve found it alright. That’s not the question. The relevant question is whether or not they’re going to do something about it.
On that question hinges the fate of what’s left of our Republic.
L
They wanted to instigate a coup to remove him from office. Duh!
Kass’ article started off promising but sure wandered off into the weeds. It’s like he was smoking some good weed half way through and forgot what he was writing about.
You are very close. Let's fix it...
They wanted to instigates a coup to remove him from office. Duh!
All thinking people, including Barr, know it. What remains is to prove it in a court of law. That's a much taller order.
****************
I see this "issues" statement as an indication that Barr will, in the end, focus on identifying abuses and proposing measures/controls to prevent them from happening again. In other words, he will focus on improving processes to ensure greater accountability.
This would unfortunately mean that he will essentially be indicting the agencies for their misconduct rather than going after individuals for their specific abuses. He will be forced to call out Comey, Brennan and a few other high officials who were obviously complicit and guilty of law breaking, but Barr will make this more of a violation of trust issue rather than criminality.
I hope I'm off base and underestimating Barr's determination to hold people accountable but his statement above indicates that he will fall far short of being the "hanging judge" that many want him to be.
IG in hiding. Huber playing games in Salt Lake City.
**************
They’re all playing games. That’s what Washington is all about.
Please see my #8.
“NOW the lazy, corrupt DC cadre of NY/DC “journalist” want to give us their useless, idiotic opinions and insights on everything... after the fact.”
There’s a lot wrong in this article (e.g. he says Trump is not a conservative) but I thought the analogy with the Catholic cover-up was good.
I don’t know that I would consider Townhall journalism, at least not in its purist sense. They’re all about opinions and pontificating. I’m not complaining, they’re better than most. Katie Pavlich is a superstar in my book.
There is very little investigative reporting these days, yet there’s so much that needs to be exposed. John Solomon, Sarah Carter, Judicial Watch are all pretty good as far as people working to get to the bottom of things but there really isn’t much beyond that. So much opportunity and so few go-getters. The paucity of real journalism these days is a scandal in itself.
Everyone and their three year old nephew knows the reasons for the hoax.
“Town Hall chose to look the other way”
They didn’t want to oppose the coup as long as it had a chance of succeeding.
“but Barr will make this more of a violation of trust issue rather than criminality.”
If he does he’ll be guilty of dereliction of duty and should be fired.
“I hope I’m off base and underestimating Barr’s determination to hold people accountable”
As do I. Of course it could be that he’s playing close to the vest.
Best,
L
Sharyl Attkisson.
I really do hope I’m wrong about Barr. Every participant in the cabal against Trump must be exposed and punished for their role in subverting our democracy. If they escape justice this will all happen again, and the next time we probably won’t be so lucky.
However, I do realize the magnitude of work involved in evidence gathering and building cases against all the perps which would seem to make mass prosecutions unlikely. Given that Barr may be content to expose those at the top and identify in his report the ways in which they weaponized federal agencies against Trump before and after he was elected.
I think the best we can hope for is to see charges filed against a few key people who directed or knowingly condoned partisan activities against Trump and/or acted to protect Hillary. They will become political casualties, so to speak, but other than incurring large legal expenses none of them will do any time.
We will have to be content with just knowing what went on and who was driving it.
I thought about her, but not seeing much original reporting from her recently. Doesn’t mean she’s not doing it, just that I’m not seeing it. I saw her on TV not long ago lamenting the decline of real journalism and of course she was right.
He has an actual track record in Federal work, and it leads me to view him as an Institutionalist, not a Constitutionalist.
His defense of Lon Horiuchi after Ruby Ridge, pro bono, alone indicates, to me, that equal justice before the law is not his standard or goal: Federal animals are more equal, to him.
I think he wants to clean house to restore the reputations of his beloved centralized institutions, not disinterestedly pursue rule of law wherever it leads.
“I don’t know that I would consider Townhall journalism, at least not in its purist sense. They’re all about opinions and pontificating. I’m not complaining, they’re better than most. Katie Pavlich is a superstar in my book.”
Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. The article appeared there also. I guess it is better late than never he starts asking questions. Here is another article he wrote a couple of weeks ago.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3752885/posts?page=13
Indictments NOW. No more futzing around with investigations, hearings, inquiries, etc., that are now, as they have long been, just ways to run out the clock and then say inaction until the next election. Then the elections after that.
As the old expression goes, “Sh*t or get off the pot!”
By now, dozens or hundreds of former and current government employees should have been indicted, gone on trial, been convicted, been through their appeals, and put in prison.
So, Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, it is past time for you to “Sh*t or get off the pot!”
Promise us nothing more.
Deliver.
Indictments.
If he refuses to do so, then President Trump we need yet another Attorney General of the United States, who will do so.
Lincoln had to go through a lot of loser generals before finding US Grant. But when he did, the Union started to win the war.
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