December 27, 2017--Lock Them Up

I know in advance that I'm going to get into trouble for this one. Therefore let me approach it carefully--

Unless you were checked into a hotel yesterday you probably didn't see USA Today. Therefore you would have missed the lead story, "Justice Probe Looms As Possible Landmine for Mueller."

The probe is not the Mueller investigation but one underway concurrently, largely out of the headlines, being conducted by the Justice Department's inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to investigate the government's contentious handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry. 

Theoretically these two investigations could proceed on separate tracks. But daily they are being conflated. In part because Donald Trump, his lawyers, Trump flacks in Congress, and especially Fox News are using what the inspector general is turning up (the FBI investigation of Clinton's emails, it must be admitted, was botched) to beat up on the independence of the Mueller probe.

Most damaging to the credibility of the investigation of Trump and his inner circle is the case of two members of Mueller's staff--FBI senior counter-intelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for both investigations and, here's the looming problem, Strzok and Page are a couple and exchanged personal emails on government servers that disparaged President Trump, thus calling into question aspects of Mueller's emerging findings.

Fox folks like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and the preposterous hosts of Fox & Friends (Trump's favorite morning TV program) are all over this as have been the bloviating rightwing radio talkshow hosts. Some have been calling for Mueller to be taken out in handcuffs. "Lock him up."

In truth, this is troubling to the Mueller investigation as it calls its fair-mindedness into question. Even though Mueller himself is a Republican that does not inure him from semi-legitimate charges that (some of) the work of his team is tainted.

So, here's my thought--

Rather than resisting the investigation of Hillary Clinton and, more broadly the Clintons, Democrats and liberals should support it. 

There is enough credible concern about her tenure as secretary of state and of the Clinton Foundation that any independent-minded person could responsibly call for all of that to be looked into.

It also would be politically smart to want this investigation to proceed. It is hypocritical to call for a close examination of Trump and his people while calling the Clinton probe political persecution.

We need to keep an eye on the big picture--the investigation of Trump and ultimately holding him and his enablers responsible for a host of offenses. 

Just as Al Franken needed to be pressed to resign in order to, with a straight face, demand that Roy Moore in Alabama be held accountable for his offenses--even though they were not morally equivalent--Trump and Hillary Clinton should be held to the same standard.

October 24, 2013--"You're Fired!"

As The Donald likes to say, "You're fired!" But in Washington, in this White House, those words are rarely spoken.

No one was fired for the killings at our consulate in Benghazi. No one was terminated for the Wikileaks leaks. No one for the Edward Snowdon N.S.A. disclosures. And no one from the Justice Department for likely illegally obtaining private telephone records for Associate Press reporters.

Basically, no one is ever fired for anything.

This, by-the-way, has been true for all recent presidents--who did Ronald Reagan fire? George H.W. Bush? Bill Clinton? George W. Bush? Pretty much no one.

A few were asked to resign, which is very different than being fired for good cause, and those who did invariably claimed it was so that they could spend more time with their families.

General Stanley McChrystal is the only Obama person I can think of who was out-and-out fired. For indiscreetly criticizing President Obama to a Rolling Stone writer. Compare that to President Truman very publicly firing General Douglas MacArthur in the middle of the Korean War.

But now we have another who was fired by the Obama White House. According to the Daily Beast, a national security official was fired last week for issuing two-year's worth of tweets in which he made insulting comments about Obama administration officials.

He is Jofi Joseph, who has been secretly tweeting under the moniker @natsewonk. Up until last week he was part of the team working on negotiations with Iran.

For the past two years he posted insults about the intelligence and appearance of top White House and State Department officials.

"I'm a fan of Obama," he tweeted, "but his continued reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me."

On another occasion, he wrote, "Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Weiner? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers [U.S. Ambassador to the UN] and Cass Sunstein [Power's husband and former Obama aide]."

General McChrystal and Jofi Joseph. A short and not very impressive list.

Americans understandable frustrated with our government would like to see officials held accountable. And fired if they foul up in big ways.

Case in point--while Jofi Joseph is looking for a new job (which I assume he is unlikely ever to secure), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius still has hers.

Considering the importance of the rollout of Obamcare and the political capital Obama has expended to get it approved, funded, and defended, considering the software disaster that is making it almost impossible for people seeking to purchase healthcare insurance on line to do so, shouldn't the person in charge be held accountable? And be dismissed?

Hundreds of millions were spent on the design of the Obamacare website and it is virtually useless. Shouldn't Sebelius have been monitoring the situation daily while it was being constructed? And since she obviously didn't, shouldn't Obama do what The Donald would do?