Arrogance of Unchecked Power Believes Itself Above Accountability

The Clown Show

2/8/2018 - Derek Hunter Townhall.com

It doesn’t take much for liberals to lose their cool, or their minds. Pretty much all you have to do is disagree with them politically, then duck and cover. But this week saw more than the usual share of insanity from our friends on the left, which is worthy of note.

The release of the memo from the Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee must’ve put a bur under the saddle of their instability because since Friday they’ve been in full gallop of crazy, unable or unwilling to stop.

First, the Democrats on the committee, after claiming the release of the Republican’s memo would be damaging to national security because it revealed “sources and methods” for gathering intelligence (it did neither), are now set to release their own memo – a reported 10-page defense of the government using partisan rumors peddled by Russian government officials to spy on Americans. It’ll be an amusing, if not informative, read.

The release of the Democrats’ memo was supported unanimously by the Intelligence Committee, unlike the Republican memo. No Democrats wanted the public to know what their government was up to when it was the GOP telling the story, but zero Republicans made any attempt to stop the liberals from telling their side. Weird, right? 

Yes, some liberal journalists are grousing about how the memos weren’t released simultaneously, but they are lying to the public. There is a very specific procedure for releasing information of this sort that requires time for the various interested parties to have a chance to weigh in. Democrats did not start the procedure for their memo until long after trying to block the Republicans' memo. So they, the Democrats, are responsible for their memo’s delay, not partisan actions by Republicans. You won’t hear that on MSNBC or CNN.

Still, in response to the release of the GOP memo, there are reports of anger inside the FBI. There are even reports that the anger “could cause spy agencies to start sharing less with Congress.” That’s exactly the problem with the FBI now – the arrogance that accompanies unchecked power that believes itself above accountability. 

Were the FBI, or any intelligence agency, to refuse constitutional oversight of Congress, that agency needs to be gutted and eliminated. It would need to be replaced, they serve a vital purpose when they follow the rules, but obstructing oversight would make them a rogue agency that has to be destroyed. 

The lead Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, was exposed this week as being so desperate to find dirt on Donald Trump that he was willing to have staff coordinate with a foreign government to get it. It turned out that he fell for a prank, but it’s telling that he would do exactly what he’s accusing Trump of doing in order to “get” the president. The media mostly yawned at the hypocrisy. 

Not to be outdone, the media seized on a joke President Trump told in Ohio, calling Democrats not applauding good economic news in the State of the Union Address “treason.” It was clearly a joke in response to something someone in the crowd said, but you’d think he was calling for the execution of liberals by the reaction to it. Of course, liberals have a rather deep recent history of calling Republicans traitors, to the cheers of (and in coordination with) the media, but why let the facts stand in the way of a good pearl clutching? 

Hysterically, alleged conservatives even engaged their fainting couches over the joke. Bill Kristol, having difficulty adapting to not mattering anymore, said the joke was “disgraceful” and suggested Congress censure the President. It’s sad to watch people so desperate for the attention they once earned through their ideas now clamor for it with temper tantrums. Hatred, it seems, trumps logic.

It’s been a joke of a week, and the punchline comes to us from The Atlantic magazine. The solution they offer to conservative pearl-clutchers is simple: vote for Democrats. The authors claim to support many Republican principles, but advocate abandoning them because, you guessed it, Trump. 

It would be a great parody, were it not so real. But it will find an audience with the Kristols and the other passengers of the “we’re the true conservatives” clown car emptying its contents on cable news nightly. Their seething hatred over Trump soiling their relevance has overridden what they made their names professing were their principles. Anger from Democrats is expected, from Republicans it's misplaced. 

Does Trump say or tweet things that make me shake my head sometimes? Absolutely. But I know the real problem in Washington is in Congress. Trump would sign just about anything put in front of him, but the “conservatives” in Congress aren’t putting anything in front of him. Not even fairly innocuous things that could pass the Senate in an election year. If Bill Kristol wants to point fingers, maybe he should look in the mirror, and at all the people in his clown car’s backseat. They have an opportunity to get done things they’ve always claimed were their priorities, and instead they’re occupying their time campaigning against the one man who would happily sign their priorities into law…if Congress would only send them to him. That, perhaps, is the biggest joke of all.