You can forget just how bad MSNBC is outside of the ever fewer liberal ghetto hours of the evening if you don't have a TV. I saw the interview of a typical cabloid dummy with Senator Patrick Leahy. I don't know the dummy's name and I don't think that's important, the cabloid dummies are pretty much all the same kind of Republican-establishment flacks. This particular MSNBC dummy tried to blame any poisoning of the relationship between Hillary Clinton and James Comey on her when he has likely broken the law in trying to throw the election to his party. But Leahy's response shows exactly what's been wrong with Democrats in the Senate all along. While I agreed with much of what Leahy said, when the dummy sought his opposition to prosecuting Comey Leahy more or less said that Hillary Clinton should give Comey as pass. To that I say NO!
James Comey is the head of the FBI, he has been a prosecutor and held other prosecutorial positions in the government. He is exactly the kind of person who has to be held to the highest standards of legal scrutiny, not let off because the DC insiders like him. For a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to more or less advocate giving him a pass is an outrageous example of how they have enabled the extreme Republicans, the fascists of Federalism and originalism and just plain right-wing plutocracy to run down democracy in the carjacked government for the past thirty years.
I stopped being able to watch Senate Judiciary committee hearings a long time ago because the crap that oozes like honey form the hypocritical mouths of its members is absolutely sickening. The last people in the world who should be listened to are the Patrick Leahy's of the world. I'd rather listen to someone who cares more about American democracy and equality under the law than the guys who irresponsibly gave everything away to its enemies.
James Comey must be subject to the same level of scrutiny that he has advocated others be subjected to. He's a man who signed on to the torture program of the George W. Bush administration after it was made more legally proper BUT IT WAS STILL A TORTURE PROGRAM. As Heather Digby Parton said:
At the time, everyone in Washington seemed to be very pleased with the choice, seeing Comey as a “straight-shooter” without a political agenda. That was largely based on his dramatic congressional testimony about the night in 2004 that he and then-FBI director Robert Mueller raced to John Ashcroft’s sick bed to stop Alberto Gonzales from coercing the ailing attorney general into signing an illegal domestic spying order. A lot of civil libertarians understood that to mean the heroic Comey was arguing the constitutional point, but he wasn’t. His concerns were over a technical problem with the program’s legal basis. They fixed a few little details and Comey himself signed the order that month to keep the secret domestic surveillance program going for many years. A civil liberties hero he is not.
Comey was also the U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution and torture of José Padilla, an American citizen convicted of terrorism whose horrific treatment was described by a forensic scientist at his pre-trial hearing as “essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind.” Again Comey took to the microphones to gallantly inform the public that his purpose was to “allow the American people to understand the threat he posed, and also understand that the president’s decision [to prosecute Padilla as an ‘enemy combatant’] was and continues to be essential to the protection of the American people.” If there’s a camera for Comey to preen before to proclaim his righteous purpose, he’ll find it
There should be a rule set in stone that a law enforcement officer who not only advocates torture but administers its use should at least be subjected to a special prosecutor when he breaks the law.
I also heard Barack Obama's press secretary saying that Obama doesn't think Comey was trying to influence the outcome of the election, which I think should pretty much convince anyone who maintains the delusion that Obama should be named to the Supreme Court that he would be a truly awful Justice. The man simply can't shake his obsession with trying to get the Republican-fascists who will always hate him and use him and play him like a slide whistle to love him. He will never stop trying to get the DC insider media to say nice things about him. He would be a truly awful Supreme Court Justice, an anti-David Souter who would always be doing things that favored Republicans and which made Democrats ask why any Democrat would have put him on the court. If there is something that the Obama Administration has to say about this matter it should be "no comment". If they hadn't put Comey in that position to start with, this and so many of his other acts favoring Republicans and damaging democracy wouldn't have happened. On this matter, Obama was played by the Republicans and the insider community and he's still being played. He plays along, willingly. Seven plus years of them treating him more disrespectfully than any other president in modern history hasn't changed that habit of his.
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