If he won’t quit, you can’t acquit. I have seen countless reasons why and how the police and courts have been used now to target people for investigations who have been deemed inconvenient to powerful people or interests, and once the police become used as a weapon, you no longer have any semblance of living in a fair and just society. (I see something you bought used may or may not have been stolen, You may or may not have known that email attachment / download link may have let to illegal software or other material (easiest way someone can be set up or to scare the shit out them just with spam because even trying to erase it can be a crime) (I was in Florida when a judge blew his brains out in his office when arrested for pornography legal in most of Florida except for his town, gotta love Florida’s sense of “justice” and “morality”), Voters on your list may have given false names / false addresses (especially those non-entities called homeless people who rank right up there with felons) and your candidate / employee / volunteer may or may not have known about it, Your article / post may or may not have incited or may or may not possibly incite someone to commit a crime if it was critical of the government / President / police / courts, XYZ Corporation, a millionaire billionaire, rich people in general, anyone powerful in general, etc. and been read by someone prior to committing a crime, and everyone’s favorite reason for a criminal investigation, You might have lied about cheating on your wife). Once investigations of ANYONE can be launched on spurious grounds because of questionable reasons, once selective enforcement of laws is used to political ends, or powerful or rich people are excluded because they are more able to fight back and have the dubious nature of why they were targeted exposed, or have connections which would make such charges or sentences go away later, you do not have a country or legal system which is not ultimately controlled by a gang of criminals.

        There were two things relevant to this which I learned from studying Russia and the Soviet Union recently in the former Soviet Union. One of which is how the Communists took control of Eastern Europe. Most Americans like to think it was violently, though force and the threat of force were obviously factors. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, the occupation forces in Eastern Europe were already on the ground and in their countries. A compromise was worked out with the newly reconstituted governments, through intimidation but “legal” that because a significant number of the people were legitimately Communists, and since the Soviets were there, that a power sharing arrangement would be worked out. “Just give us control of the police,” was basically what was requested. With that, obviously, they were able to steal everything else. A few questionable elections later, and low and behold, everything was safely in their hands.

        Another is how criminals now outsource their protection enforcement to the police. Why kill someone or try to destroy their lives if the cross / displease you when you have a corrupted legal system which will not only do it for you, but which includes its built-in insurance against police questioning? It is the ultimate criminal one-stop-shopping. When innocent people routinely die in jail awaiting trial on obviously set-up or bogus charges, or when merely the threat of being charged with a specific crime is so damaging to ones life or would devastate their families financially, and when asking the police for help is basically dealing with the same loose knit organization of cooperative actors, criminals and police and politicians are all on the same page and profit from the same convergence of interests.

        But that is Russia, you might say. Big Bad Scary Russia. That could never happen in the good ol’ US of A! People have a sense that the attorney scandal was the tip of a greater manipulation of the legal system. Some even suspect that it could be part of an overall strategy that includes illegal wiretaps and databases that log all phone and computer activity cross-referenced by things like race and voter affiliation.

       But say how these leaked blatantly illegal programs still ongoing might fit together and not be just a happenstance string of random “bad apples” and still yet, though far more probable that just being “accidental coincidences” and you will still be written off as a “conspiracy theorist”. There is a pattern to what is going on now in terms of illegal activity specifically directed at key people, and the US attorney scandal, the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,”(aka the felonious illegal wiretapping at the direction of the President program) and others which were leaked BY THE PEOPLE DOING THEM who were chosen for their LOYALTY TO BE TRUSTED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF THEM because it was inconceivable that they would leak such information because of political and psychological profiling, they are the least of which could be uncovered by any uncorrupted legal system. Unfortunately, we know we don’t have one.

      “Obstruction of an investigation” is no longer a crime if done by the right people. “Blackmail” is no longer a crime if done by the right people. Countless other crimes, can be, are, and will be excused if done in the name of covering up other crimes done by the Executive branch or any other actors they have contracted to do things on their behalf if contrary to the law and/or Constitution. The commuted sentence of “Scooter” Libby was a message just like a Mafia hit is meant to send a message. Cross us and there is no means to which we will not go to cover our tracks.

        I had mentioned in the previous post how the former Speaker of the House considered Alberto Gonzales’s actions amounting to blackmail or intimidation. People have recently alleged that the Vice-President’s office has been trying to blackmail or “pressure” not only members of Congress and their staffs, but members of the President’s staff as well. The level of criminality festering under the surface is incalculable while instead of creating the means for these crimes to be exposed, quite the opposite is occurring and new means are being devised everyday to retaliate and new threats of retaliation upon those who might wish to try to come forward. They not only would be abandoned by a President who would otherwise be their saving grace for crimes they did at his direction, but they risk being set up for things they did not do, or have to fight false allegations they know or fear, with overwhelming reason, would be thrown at them by the police or by the press, depending upon their level of importance and visibility.

        I said in RCP2 that things are changing, and they are. Ground has been given to letting out the truth, and if it were not for many brave people who have been willing to put their lives and careers on the line against the machinery of their own government and police being co-opted and used to illegal ends and to cover up illegal activities by the heads of their own agencies and of the Executive Branch, and I am certainly not one to say it has not been enough. You cannot ask people to do what you know will bring the wrath of illegal retaliation against them for speaking out and doing what is right, and that ultimately they are correct by almost every rational view for remaining silent. For me, I had a glimpse of where that road leads, of where remaining silent will take us. If others cannot see it, or pretend not to, that is ultimately their matters alone.

        For that reason, I will not say that the “Family Jewels” was not enough. It was something, and something is always better than nothing, which was what we had before, and reason to think would always in the near future be the case. But something far darker is on the horizon and I must now venture into the Iranian topic.

        During the Cold War, it was convenient that if the world was destroyed, no one would know who was to blame. It made it all so nice and simple. If anyone would be thought to be responsible for an Armageddon that could be trigger by simply a computer error or human error, most around the world would have assumed it was the Soviet Union, at least by the West, which to most in the West, IS the world.

        Now the tables have turned, and for good reason. Most the world outside of America knows the US has been launching wars of aggression which our own Nuremberg lawyers have said were no different than Germany or Russia’s illegal invasions, but Americans, those who bother to care share the President’s same contempt for International Law. Why should we be “bound” by what may not be in “our nation’s” best interests?

        But far more damning to me as far as tracing back to now what may be what our own intelligence services have repeatedly warned the President and leaked, would be “uncontainable catastrophic consequences,”that being if we were to attack Iran on behalf of Israel, the Neocons, or whatever other group or person might think that to be a swell idea. That would be far worse than the killings of potentially hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq, or even that we do not allow or enable the counting of civilian losses there by our actions, because this one is being done in this more open time after more has been exposed of our criminality and what even one of our top generals described as a “government run like a Mafia,” with not only the blessing of Congress, not via disinformation doled out to the uncritical press spouting press releases as God’ to Moses divined truths, but the most heinous willful ignorance by both political parties.

        I am speaking of the condemnation by Congress of Iran for a statement by its President accusing him of inciting genocide against Israel based upon a translation known to be potentially, completely, mistranslated. This was just one of a PR campaign designed to soften the American public up to approving a bombing campaign or war with Iran, but by far a telling one. Both parties prevented a potentially more accurate translation which instead called for regime change in Israel, not exactly friendly either, but no less than what we have done repeated recently in regards to many countries around the world. Say one of them accused us erroneously as using that statement to say we were advocating genocide, and prevented, as our wonderful and just Congress did, from even allowing an expert translation approved by that countries most prestigious newspaper, from even being read into the record in its Congress or Parliament. NO EVIDENCE to the contrary to claims they could not have know to be possibly without merit on an accusation tantamount to a declaration of war, or to use as evidence to justify one!

       How much more close could any country be to saying the truth does not matter. That we will do the most grave and serious things, up to and including actions that will cause thousands of innocent deaths, based upon faulty and questionable “evidence” which we will not even allow to have contrary verifiable evidence be submitted into record by our legislators, even if it is accepted as potentially true by a press always sympathetic to misinformation the other way. For them, even that bending of reality was too much. For our Congress, it was just fine and completely unquestionable, regardless of its accuracy.

       They have learned much from the President, and we as a country have learned nothing yet from the last 6 years of how the truth has taken a backseat to police, press, politicians, and pundits who can be pressed and made to dance like marionettes to things everyone knows to be based upon lies and political manipulations, yet no one is allowed to complain about safely. Yet what or who is really safe in such an environment?

       I have been allowed to go further than I had anticipated, so nothing that happens now could come as a surprise or shock. I always took the best shot that was possible at the time where I saw the greatest hypocrisies and the best potentials for change. There is still time for a few more posts before rational debates again become impossible, before Congress goes nuts with what should have been done long ago, wins or goes home, and truth telling becomes treasonous again. So those posts are what I look forward to now, and also hoping others see the fork ahead and the potential destruction of everything they thought was good about America, its ideals, its honesty, and above all, its sense of honor, which will either be redeemed soon, or lost forever.