Your post made me do some kind of handstand. I always look at things indignant at how hard the (what I used to call the) lib media would take everything a republican did, and how hypocritical they were. But as you point out, WE the constitution lovers would have thrown a never ending fit if Gore has sneaked out all the Saudis during the time when Americans couldn’t travel by air. And we didn’t fuss too much (though it was a topic on FR) when Bush did it: we decided to trust him.
Re: Your Post #66
Historian James Burke once co-created and hosted a very interesting TV series entitled ‘Connections” in which he traced causes and effects of various events through history.
He could no doubt do a bang-up job tracing the historical genesis of Barack Obama as president and the consequent rise of Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just the Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush and Clinton era presidencies (and congress and senates) that brought us to a state where a man like Barack Obama could be elected and a person like Hillary Clinton could get this close to the presidency.
Although they all played a part - republicans and democrats.
Some much more than others.
You might say that America’s critical condition today is a result of bleeding from a thousand cuts.
Some that date back at least to the early part of the 1900’s.
Each time the envelope was pushed and a barrier fell it became easier for the next president, congress and senate to push just a little further.
Sort of analogous to the metaphor of the frog in the slowly heated water.
Most of the time (but not all of the time) it was for short term gain and probably seemed small enough to the culprits that they convinced themselves they weren’t really doing any lasting damage, or at least not bringing about severely damaging, long lasting change.
Most never thought the fable of the Golden Goose could become reality.
Others, like Obama. hoped it would.