Nothing like closing the barn door after the horse has been found in St. Petersburg. (Reuters)
Maybe it will help a little for 2018, at least.
I’d like to see the IG’s report before I get too weepy for McCabe and his pension (which in any case will be outstripped by the book deal he probably just signed). Some bad stuff happened at the FBI in 2016. Not everyone who is cast aside by this administration needs to become a hero of the #resistance.
That said, I don’t trust that anybody in this administration is actually doing any of this in good faith. Comey deserved to face consequences too, but obviously that’s not why he was fired.
Considering there has to be clear evidence of serious misconduct for the career people at OPR to recommend a firing, I’d assume they find it sad to see a guy flush away his career like that.
From memory: “Of hope, faith and charity, eventually only charity remains.”
The FBI just accused Russia of wrongdoing. Someone had to pay the price.
St Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 13.
Or as we were taught at St Patrick’s in the 1950s (hardly a time of hippy-dippy liberalism in the RCC): “Charity is how faith makes itself known.”
Comey and McCabe probably did violate specific rules and procedures, but that should not really be the focus of the discussion, in my view, not when the agency and the DoJ in general have been repeatedly subjected to unwarranted political pressures to further a right wing agenda. I don’t think any of us are so naive as to believe that individual agents don’t have their own personal biases or that there isn’t even wider bias within offices, depending on the region and the individual personalities involved. But the Republican party decided to use a bureaucratic agency that was supposed to be neutral and politicize the bureaucracy for political gain. In doing so they placed individuals like Comey and McCabe in no-win positions, forcing them to make decisions that were going to be interpreted as politically motivated, regardless of whatever they decided to do. Infractions that would and should have otherwise been dealt with internally become publicized, forcing the people charged with cleaning up the mess afterward to also make decisions that are going to have the scent of politicization. McCabe should have been forced to retire but firing him and cutting him of his benefits was Trump’s and the Right’s way of sending a message to everyone else in the entire federal bureaucracy: loyalty, or else. That, and nothing else, should be the focus of discussion here, because if a democratic society shrugs and allows this type of executive conduct to continue, it won’t be a democracy much longer.
Speaking as a libertarian and former* Libertarian party activist, that route is a long, hard road with little reward. Both Democrat and Republican dominated legislatures, depending on the state, put forth as many hurdles as they can to keep alternative parties off of the ballot then when hauled into court about it come up with the most specious arguments I’ve seen until the current administration.
COFOE, the Coalition for Free and Open Elections, researches these inequities and constantly brings lawsuits when it can, as do the parties in question. Ballot Access News records these efforts. There was a reason David Duke and Lyndon LaRouche ran for president in the Democratic party primaries; it wasn’t because they upheld the party’s platform.
*I stopped after getting tired of fighting other libertarians more than I was fighting the state.
Depends how it plays out. Politics has never been more involved in areas it should never be.
I believe it’s been established that FBI et al, LEOs and Military are mostly towards the conservative side of center. My personal estimation from far left, leans left, center, leans right, far right is 0%, 10%, 10%, 70%, 10%.
If the center right wakes up to the TRUMP! debacle, I have hope, if they continue in thrall to the growing authoritarianism, very little.
Indeed, there is a reason they ran in the Democratic primaries, and there is a reason they lost. A two-party system gives voters a choice, but it does a better job of removing fringe choices that are potentially destructive. We’re probably better for it.
I’d like to believe that, but self-interest has a way of usurping principle. People with jobs usually like to keep those jobs, and others might even be interested in a promotion. They may not like the way Trump bashes the DoJ but what happens is that those who want their jobs simply shut up and keep their heads down; those who can’t stand it simply walk out. Over time, it bends to the will of the people doing the bending. A few more years of this and we’re going to have law enforcement agencies, from the Bureau to the DEA to your local police department, that are reminiscent of Frank Rizzo’s police and Hoover’s FBI.
Those paragons may be gone but we still have Sheriff Joe & JulieAnnie among the living, though to look at them maybe that’s a little hard to believe.
I do think that we are not looking at the end of civilization, nor even the end of democracy. There are a number of checks to prevent that. However, one of those checks is indeed voter vigilance. We do have a potential crisis brewing, and it is up to us, as voters, to prevent it. It’s not something that is going to be done for us from those on high above.
To say, “Democracy is collapsing, and civilization is at an end.” is a bit chichen littlish. But to say, “Democracy is in danger, and we must be vigilant to protect it.” is absolutely appropriate.
Unfortunately, when those on the right hear the latter, they accuse of saying the former. Some because they are too stupid to actually understand the difference, but many do, they are just trolls who think that everyone else is too stupid to understand the difference.
If it does come to pass that the far left wing manages to get trump re-elected, then yes, absolutely. I don’t think that there are enough purity idiots out there that will put their ideals over the reality of the suffering that will be caused by furthering and validating the policies of this administration to make that happen, but if turns out to be the case, yeah, screw them.
We have up and coming wanna be fascist law enforcement heads aplenty.
Ex-CIA chief John Brennan responds on Twitter to Trump celebrating McCabe’s firing.
@JohnBrennan “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.”
Go John!
Amen!
And thank you General McCaffery…
Lots of older folks on my local Democratic Committee were Bernie supporters and we all supported Hillary in the general. I posted on the Straight Dope Elections board that former Bernie folks needed to vote for Hillary to prevent the disaster of Trump.
I was driving around listening to CNN. McCabe is fighting back. Trump bullied him on a regular basis calling his wife a loser. McCabe documented this in memos similar to Comey. McCabe thinks he could be a witness in Mueller’s Russia investigation and Trump wanted him publically discredited.
The firing may have cost McCabe $1.8 million, but it likely added a zero to the end of his eventual book/media contract, so he’ll be fine.
Regardless of the merits of allegations against McCabe, the timing of this firing violates agency policies regarding due process:
The allegations against McCabe have been known for months. The timing of the firing–26 hours before the pension would have been secure-- was intended (as others have noted) to send a message to other officials that any perceived disloyalty to Trump will be punished harshly.
It thus moves further in the authoritarian direction of making the nation’s Justice Department and intelligence and law-enforcement agencies into personal tools of a capricious President.
A position of ‘wait and see if McCabe really did anything wrong’ really isn’t what’s relevant, here. What’s at issue is the politicization of government bodies that were never intended to be the personal servants of any President.