Archive for the 'Politics' Category

The Zelman Partisans.

As I am sure you noticed — unless you were lucky enough to be away from radio, television, Internet, or gossip — we just had a bad weekend. If you were — momentarily — fortunate enough to miss it, two socialist chumbuckets gunned down a lot of innocent people. As I write, the tally is 29 dead (so far; more victims are in critical condition), and dozens more wounded, in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

Mainstream media latched onto a manifesto (let me know if the link goes dead; we need to know the enemy) purportedly written by the El Paso bucket o’chum, and declared him to be a pro-Trump white nationalist who hates immigrants. The actual manifesto paints a picture of an anti-capitalist, envirowhacko (he cites The Lorax) socialist who wants to get rid of immigrants to make implementing universal basic income more palatable, and wants to reduce the nation’s population to a “sustainable” level. He wanted all this long before Trump came on the political scene. Before pages got edited, he appeared to be a registered Democrat. He used a WASR-10.

The Dayton asshole was a self-avowed socialist, who wanted to impose socialism on everyone whether we want it or not. He advocated for more gun control. He allegedly made “hit” and “rape” lists in high school. He murdered his sister and her boyfriend and seven more people. He was a registered Democrat. His weapon was an Anderson Manufacturing AM-15.

Read the rest.

Yea, I noticed that too about the El Paso shooter.  He wanted universally guaranteed income, something no one committed to liberty wants because it always means taking it away from someone else.  Or in other words, thievery by the power of a badge and gun.

As for the Dayton shooter, not only was he a socialist, he was a Satanist and member of a band called “Pornogrind” which released songs about raping and killing women.  Well, he’s met his maker and he currently doubts neither God’s existence nor the fact that he will be eternally accountable for his actions.

So much for trying to lump the rest of gun owners in with this schmuck.  Point that out every chance you get.  It’s sort of like Timothy McVeigh.  When I hear folks say that he was a Christian I remind them I watched an interview of McVeigh right before his execution.  He was an avowed atheist.

I have nothing in common with socialists or Satanists.

It pays to be educated and aware because you can correct the lies and misdirects.

I don’t sit waiting on the next post by Max Velocity in order to critique it, but this came in the mail and I felt that it would be appropriate to weigh in with readers.

This is a bit of a combination post and is intended to get a few things off my chest, and challenge the narrative. I will mince no words when I tell you that the state of things in this country right now appalls me. We have just had July the 4th and as a (former) Brit I have seen my share of dumb statements that drive me nuts.

Anyway, this is what I think: I will ‘recast’ for you the American Revolution. I know you won’t like it, because you have been reared on your own historical propaganda. In simple terms, the events surrounding 1776 were a civil war between the British Crown and Aristocratic landlords in the US, who were British. The colonies were British and had been for a couple of hundred years. The beginnings of America were British.

In the 1776 civil war, there were various actors. The British Regular Army, Hessian mercenaries, the Rebels, the Colonial Loyalists, and the French Navy. When Paul Revere made his ride, what he was actually yelling was “The Regulars are coming.” Not the British, because everyone was British.

When the Regulars marched to Lexington, they were met by British Colonial Militia. Yes, yes, farmers with guns blah blah, but they were actually a militia, trained to be able to fight with the weapons of the day. However, nothing should take away from the huge achievement of the rebels. I won’t go on here about that fact that Britain was involved in a huge war with France, and that a tiny percentage of combat power was only ever able to be given up to fight in the American colonies. For the colonies, this was a life and death struggle; for Britain, it was a sideshow. Same with 1814 etc: for Americans relating this on July 4th, it is everything, for the British Empire at the time it was nothing but a side-show to achieve specific political objectives. In short, there is a lot of American Hubris over events about 200 years ago, not really tied to any general awareness of world events at the time. Much of this can be traced to American ethnocentrism safe behind the ocean walls that protect this country. Consider this: Britain was involved in a total war with the French Empire, which was not concluded until the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. By today’s standards, the relatively small taxes levied in the Colonies were to help pay for that war. It was extremely self centered for the Rebels to pick that time to conduct a revolution: and don’t forget the large number of Colonial Loyalists who stayed loyal. I have not studied it, but given the war in Europe, I am interested to know who it was that Britain sent to the Colonies as Regular troops in order to fight the rebellion. What was their standard? Were they green troops or hardened veterans who were sent for a needed rest? It’s an interesting point.

If he’s right, it wasn’t self-centered, it was smart.  But I don’t think he’s right.  In fact, I think this analysis is very poor and perhaps suffers from his own propagandistic rearing.  And no, I couldn’t care less who were the British regulars sent to prosecute war in the Americas.

We’ve dealt with this in just a bit of detail before, but I’ll recapitulate it.  General Howe was hopelessly mired in operations in the North.  The linchpin of the British strategy was General Cornwallis and his plan to take the important Southern port of Charleston, which he did after taking Savannah, and then move North through the Carolinas and eventually meet with General Howe.  Despite several conventional victories, his forces suffered many casualties and lack of logistics mainly because of the insurgency in South Carolina (combined with the death of his plan to use loyalist troops in battle against patriots).

His intention was to march Northward, with the hideously awful plan of leaving loyalists in charge of land and assets taken in battle.  This approach failed when loyalists evaporated and patriots multiplied.  Cornwallis’ plan to march Northward became a plan to flee to Wilmington carrying wounded troops and attempt resupply.  He was hauling wounded troops with a depleted force, and needed lead ball, gunpowder and virtually everything else.  His retreat to Wilmington was unapproved, but he knew that his force couldn’t sustain much longer without rest and resupply.

At the height of the campaign in Afghanistan, I predicted the failure of logistics through Chaman and the Khyber pass, and because of the U.S. failure to engage the Caucasus region, supply aircraft left and returned from Donaldson AFB 24 hours a day, 365 days per year (Mr. Bob King, Instructor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations, Leavenworth, encouraged my work in this area).  Essentially, logistics were provided to U.S. forces in Afghanistan via air transport, which is no way to prosecute a war.

The American continent became the British Afghanistan times a thousand.  Continued logistics were impossible.  The expanse of the land made it too cumbersome, too difficult, too costly, and too involved.  Furthermore, the temperament of the people was not conducive to rule by the Brits.  It wouldn’t have mattered if The Brits had sent all of their armies.  The campaign would have lasted longer, but in the end the outcome would have been the same.

But the most profoundly wrong sentiment in the article I cited above isn’t the analysis of the campaign, but rather, the reasons and impetus for its advent.  Whether there were aristocrats involved or engaged isn’t the point.  Modern American community is fractured to the point of being nonexistent.  Consider.  In the expansive wilderness of the American frontier, if a man perished on the field of battle, he needed someone he could entrust with the lives of his widow and children.  To whom could you turn today?

In order to understand history, one must turn to the primary source documents.  Secondary source documents, along with the pronouncements of professors of history, can lead one astray.  For both the American war of independence and the war between the states, my professors forced me to study sermons, and in fact read some aloud in class.

The city square was little visited compared to the church pew in colonial times.  The place for philosophy, politics and theology was the pulpit, and the theologian-philosopher was the pastor.  In order to understand why the American revolution happened, you must read the sermons of the day.  Aristocrat-involvement or not, fighting men were needed, men who could entrust their families to aid from a dedicated community in the event of their death.  Without fighting men, such an adventure as the American revolution is just a figment of aristocratic imagination.

The sermons were heavily focused on the breakage of covenant by King George.  In fact, it has been said – and correctly so – that “The American revolution was a Presbyterian rebellion.”  “Calvinists and Calvinism permeated the American colonial milieu, and the king’s friends did not wish for this fact to go unnoticed.”

As I’ve explained elsewhere:

In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background.  There were about three million persons in the thirteen original colonies in 1776, and perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or Puritan connection.

[ … ]

… by 1776, nine of the thirteen original colonies had an “established church” (generally congregational in New England, Anglican in New York, Virginia and South Carolina, “Protestant” in North Carolina, with religious freedom in Rhode Island, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia) … While this did not necessarily mean that a majority of the inhabitants of these colonies were necessarily committed Christian believers, it does indicate the lingering influence of the Calvinist concept of a Christian-based civil polity as an example to a world in need of reform.

Every colony had its own form of Christian establishment or settlement.  Every one was a kind of Christian republic.  It was to them a monstrous idea … for an alien body, parliament, to impose an establishment on them.  The colonies were by nature and history Christian … to read the Constitution as the charter for a secular state is to misread history, and to misread it radically.  The Constitution was designed to perpetrate a Christian order.

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

It may be difficult for contemporary Americans to comprehend, but for colonial America, covenant was king, the roots of the revolution were largely theological, and the people were deeply religious whether the aristocrats were or not.  There was going to be revolution with or without the aristocrats.  The Brits in America and the Brits in England were far too different to co-exist under the same crown.

Before closing, there is one more odd statement in the article.

None of the above is to say that I don’t think that ultimately the events of 1776 – 1787, resulting in the founding of the original thirteen colonies of America as a separate united country, was a bad thing. It’s just important to look at it in it’s true light. My understanding is that a lot of loyalists moved to Canada – it’s pretty poor form that the US then tried to invade Canada! Consider also Washington’s put-down of the Whiskey Rebellion – how hypocritical. In fact, that makes you smell a rat at the very beginning of the formation of the country. It was about the first new American tax. Many of the rebels were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution; against taxation without local representation, while the new federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.

I’ve seen this sentiment before and while tempting, I do not fully concur with it.  If the power of taxation doesn’t extend to the payment of salaries for military service, it would never extend to anything.  A conversation between a libertarian and me almost turned ugly at one point when he demanded that continued medical services for veterans was socialism.

To be sure, unearned entitlements such as SNAP and welfare is socialism, but as for what my son did in the USMC, he signed a contract with the U.S. government.  The WCF has this to say about lawful oaths and vows.

Whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein to avouch nothing but what he is fully persuaded is the truth. Neither may any man bind himself by oath to anything but what is good and just, and what he believeth so to be, and what he is able and resolved to perform.

The contract signed by my son, and all veterans, and by the U.S. government, is a lawful oath.  His education benefit, his medical benefits, and so on, were part of the contract.  Failure to meet the stipulations of that contract is sinful.  You can decide that you don’t like it and work through your elected representatives to change it, but you cannot revisit what has been signed.  I repeat.  It is a lawful covenant.

Equally sinful is the failure to pay for service rendered by the members of the continental army.  The Whiskey tax was legally passed with local representation in 1791.  Max’s objection that the rebels believed they were fighting against a tax that lacked “local representation” is fabulating.  The members of the House approved it.  They elected the members of the House.

To be sure, I would have chosen to do this otherwise (than a silly, nonsensical tax on Whiskey).  But of equal importance, perhaps more important, is the question why America believed it could avoid the immorality of failing its obligations to fulfill covenants and contracts.  That says as much about the times as does the Whiskey tax.

“You shall not muzzle an Ox when it is treading out the grain,” (Deut 25:4).  So says God, whether you like it or not.

The final points on due remuneration to soldiers of the continental army are mostly beside the point except that they were addressed in the original article.  Suffice it to say that I disagree with the spirit of the balance of the article.

I do concur that it is time for America to take note of what has been gained, what has been lost, and why we are where we find ourselves.  But Max, while full of complaints, suffers from what I find in this community.  Diagnosis of the problem is everywhere.  Remedies are in short supply.

I intend to offer a few remedies of my own, and these are unrelated to the article that started this.  I don’t want to leave the reader without hope and actionable ideas.

1] Resolve never to be disarmed.  That is the least your family and community should be able to expect from you.  This involves having a world and life view to support such a determination.  You have no greater God-given duty than to your family for their protection and provision.

Libertarianism isn’t that world and life view.  As R. J. Rushdoony observed:

“Modern libertarianism rests on a radical relativism: no law or standard exists apart from man himself. Some libertarian professors state in classes and in conversation that any position is valid as long as it does not claim to be the truth, and that therefore Biblical religion is the essence of evil to them. There must be, according to these libertarians, a total free market of ideas and practices.

If all men are angels, then a total free market of ideas and practices will produce only an angelic community. But if all men are sinners in need of Christ’s redemption, then a free market of ideas and practices will produce only a chaos of evil and anarchy. Both the libertarian and the Biblical positions rest on faith, the one on faith in the natural goodness of man, the other on God’s revelation concerning man’s sinful state and glorious potential in Christ. Clearly the so-called rational faith of such irrationalism as Hess and Rothbard represent has no support in the history of man nor in any formulation of reason. It is a faith, and a particularly blind faith in man, which they represent.”

Libertarianism is tyranny by substituting the government for the individual.  A tyrant by any other name is still a tyrant, and tyranny can present itself in lawless behavior in the community just as it can in taxation.  Classic libertarian politicians, like Ron and Rand Paul, care less about laws to protect the border than the democrats (who want voters) or republicans (who want cheap workers for the corporations).  Libertarianism leads to lawlessness and breaking of covenants, contracts, vows, oaths and obligations.

Your basis for never being disarmed is that you were created in God’s image, and His law is immutable and transcendental.  Anything else is shifting ground and will disappoint you.

2] Consider your community.  If you cannot entrust anyone except family for the protection of your wife and children, not only is that a sad testimony concerning the state of America, but it makes a laughingstock of plans to conduct small unit fire and maneuver tactics.  You need to look for a good church, one that values caring for widows and orphans more than it does large buildings and multi-media presentations.

3] Horace Mann laughs from the grave.  If your children or grandchildren are in the public school systems of communist reeducation, you should consider home schooling.  Incrementalism isn’t something we should reject in the patriot community.  Practically and humanly speaking, the father of modern Christian education in America, Rousas J. Rushdoony, believed so thoroughly in Christian education and home schooling that he spent much of his life on it and believed it to be the only real hope for America.

I hope this engenders discussion, thought and study.

Via Codrea, this absurdity.

However, despite the case between Timbs and Indiana making it to the United States Supreme Court last year — and the SCOTUS unanimously ruling with Timbs — the state of Indiana is still trying to argue that even the most petty instances of breaking the law can result in civil asset forfeiture.

According to Reason, that includes a situation involving a vehicle that was stopped for going five miles per hour over the speed limit, if you ask Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher.

“This is the position that we already staked out in the Supreme Court when I was asked by Justice [Stephen] Breyer whether a Bugatti can be forfeited for going over five miles over the speed limit,” Fisher said last week during oral arguments before the Indiana Supreme Court.

“Historically, the answer to that question is yes, and we’re sticking with that position here.”

Ooooo … a lawyer “staked out a position.”  So I guess we’re all supposed to genuflect.  Even though it’s morally and legally wrong, if he’s staked out the position, well then, it must be enforceable even though the highest court in the land said no.

Because progs like the courts when it suits them, and they ignore the courts when it doesn’t.  So put that in your ecumenical pipe and smoke it, Justice Roberts.  Or stick it somewhere else.  He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what your court said.

News from Oregon.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) authorized the state police to bring Republican lawmakers back to Salem after several left the state to avoid a vote on a climate bill.

[ … ]

Oregon state Sen. Brian Boquist (R) on Wednesday appeared to threaten violence if state police were sent to return Republicans to Salem.

“This is what I told the superintendent,” Boquist said, referring to Oregon State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton. “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”

I think I like the cut of his jib.

David Codrea:

“In terms of ‘why,’ the State Department has authority under the statute (the Arms Export Control Act) to govern exports ‘in furtherance of world peace and the security and foreign policy of the U.S.,’” Reeves elaborated. “Under the law they do not have to get more specific, although sometimes they may give more information concerning a specific export. The courts have held there is no constitutional right to engage in exports or imports, and there is considerable deference granted to the State Department for making national security or foreign policy decisions.”

[ … ]

It would be an overdue gesture of support to see the president actually do something pro-active to advance the interests of the firearms community. It would be a welcome reversal of some baffling “concessions” the president has made on “bump stocks,” on “red flags,” and most recently, on suppressors.

As scary as the thought of Democrats taking over in 2020 is, talk is now coming from some with national voices about the possibility of a critical mass of thoroughly disillusioned gun owners sitting things out. And this isn’t a matter of “Would you rather have Biden?” or Harris or Buttigieg, as the “Hear No Evil/3D chess” Trump apologists angrily challenge back.

I simply don’t buy that this is merely a function of the administrative state, owned and operated by progressives for progressives.  No, this administrative state is owned by Donald Trump.  He could have put anyone he wanted in charge of the State Department, and apparently someone is in charge who doesn’t care to change these things.

What Rex Tillerson did was just a start.  The vast majority of the statist apparatchiks there need to be given their pink slips and told to find real work.  Then they may not be able to find the time to undermine the country and interfere with free trade.

This is a very recent picture of my son in Austin, Texas.

You’ve got to give them both credit.  Austin is a happening place to be if you want the front lines of the culture war.

Alex at Ammo.com sent this article my way, and I haven’t ignored it.  I had to ponder it a bit before weighing in.

Regardless if depression is overdiagnosed and America has a habit of over-prescribing mind-altering medications, there’s little doubt that SSRIs have a risk of increasing violence in patients, even in patients who have no previous history of violence or aggression before taking the medication.

This risk of violent behavior, both to the individual taking the medication and those around them, is so significant, it has led to the FDA mandating a black box warning on all SSRI medications. These black box warnings are designed to provide information and draw attention to the fact that the medication has serious and life-threatening risks.

As of 2004, all antidepressants in the U.S. are labeled:

“Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”

[ … ]

Some of the side effects caused by SSRIs can increase the risk of violence against others. Perhaps the most risky, emotional blunting (or detachment) has been linked to SSRI use and many people who’ve taken the drugs report “not feeling” or “not caring” about anything. There’s also been an established causal relationship between SSRI use and psychosis and hallucinations, both of which are known to increase the risk of violence in individuals.

[ … ]

In most cases, the vast majority of people who suffer from mental illness are nonviolent. Even those who self-harm are highly unlikely to hurt others. In fact, these individuals are more likely to become victims of violent crimes than the general public.

Yet after each mass shooting tragedy, the media fills with psychiatrists who say that the individual didn’t seek the help they needed and that with the proper treatment, the tragedy may have been prevented. But research doesn’t support that philosophy.

In fact, depression in particular doesn’t lead to violence, yet since the increase in SSRI antidepressants being widely prescribed, the rise in mass shootings has increased right along with it. And evidence shows that many mass shooters were either taking or had recently taken SSRIs.

He gives a number of examples, and the number of examples he gives isn’t trivial.  So the initial reaction to all of this could be, “Well, if SSRIs can cause violence behavior, then put them on a list and prevent them from purchasing guns.”

But lists are exactly what the controllers want, and even more to the point, it’s exactly what the controllers want the soccer moms to admit that we need.  And the only ones who could manage such a list?  Why, it would be FedGov.  Presto.  More power for the controllers, and after the soccer moms admit that lists are needful, it’s a simple thing to keep adding to that list.

I am not asserting that there is no danger in SSRIs.  Anything that powerful to affect your psyche must be managed properly.  And there is no doubt that such things are over-prescribed today by doctors in America.  The flip side of the coin is that such medications do help with pain management, and there are certainly patients who do okay with them – for a while.

Other than pain management, I see this as a reflection of the depression not of individuals, but an entire society which has rejected God, His holy law for our lives, and the saving grace bestowed in His only Son.  My former (and now decreased) professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, wrote in the preface of his book “From Rationalism to Irrationality,” that the west is sick unto death.  That was decades ago.

The society reflects its individuals, and individuals make the society.  The world and life view of modernism has led us to where we are today, and lists won’t be of any help getting us back.  Lists will help the controllers be more controlling, and we all know about mass shootings on behalf of the state and what that did to the world in the twentieth century (170,000,000 dead).

As for what to do, if someone calls for lists, its as out of balance as our society is.  God’s economy is three-pronged: the state, the church, and the family.  None are supposed to be subservient to the other.  The solution lies in something other than lists, and thus I’m where David Codrea is on this: “Anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.”

Exactly what form that takes is another discussion, but a ban-list for guns for some SSRI patients isn’t nearly enough, as they can always go to the local tractor supply for several loads of fertilizer.  And that doesn’t help the SSRI patients who do okay on the medications one whit.

News from Idaho:

Something rather remarkable just happened in Idaho. The state legislature opted to—in essence—repeal the entire state regulatory code. The cause may have been dysfunction across legislative chambers, but the result is serendipitous. A new governor is presented with an unprecedented opportunity to repeal an outdated and burdensome regulatory code and replace it with a more streamlined and sensible set of rules. Other states should be paying close attention.

The situation came about due to the somewhat unconventional nature of Idaho’s regulatory process. Each year, the state’s entire existing body of regulations expires unless reauthorized for an additional year by the legislature. In most years, reauthorization happens smoothly, but not this year.

Instead, the legislature wrapped up an acrimonious session in April without passing a rule-reauthorization bill. As a result, come July 1, some 8,200 pages of regulations containing 736 chapters of state rules will expire. Any rules the governor opts to keep will have to be implemented as emergency regulations, and the legislature will consider them anew when it returns next January.

Governor Brad Little, sworn into office in January, already had a nascent red tape cutting effort underway, but the impending regulatory cliff creates some new dynamics. Previously, each rule the governor wanted cut would have had to be justified as a new rulemaking action; now, every regulation that agencies want to keep has to be justified. The burden of proof has switched.

The new scenario creates multiple touch points when rules could end up on the cutting room floor. First, when regulations expire on July 1, many will not be refiled. Second, the public will have the opportunity to comment on regulations that are resubmitted. In some cases, public hearings are likely to take place, presenting another opportunity to reshape, and cut, some regulations. Finally, when the legislature returns next year, it will need to pass a reauthorization bill for those regulations Governor Little’s administration wants kept. Even more red tape can be trimmed then.

Good idea.  Throw everything away and start over.  I’m sure the pit vipers sitting in the capital will find a way to foist unnecessary regulations on their constituency, as they always do.  But in this case at least there’s a chance of turning these back.

Now, if we could just convince the other 49 states to do the same thing.  And if libertarians and conservatives just cared enough to get involved in the process.

News from Colorado:

The school does not have a school resource officer, but the school does have private security, Kluth said. School staff notified emergency dispatchers “almost immediately” after the first gunshots were fired, and deputies were on scene within two minutes and engaged the suspects, Spurlock said.

Sorry folks, but that’s not nearly fast enough as this incident goes to show.  A lot of people can get hurt in two minutes, and that’s a fast response time for most PDs.

This recapitulates a conversation I had with someone on Sunday, after I heard a pastor say of the police on campus, “They are here to protect you and keep you safe.”

That’s a lie.  The police know it, and the congregation should be told the truth.  This is especially true of small congregations who don’t have the financial resources to hire cops to sit or stand around.

The job of keeping families safe falls to the same people who provide for them, teach them and nurture them: heads of families and their spouses.

And note again that this was a gun free zone, a soft target, just like many church congregations are on Sunday.  It’ll keep happening until people learn to protect themselves and those for whom they have been given charge.

David Codrea:

What’s going on is obvious. After spending almost two years and millions of dollars, the once much-touted Mueller investigation came up empty, with no evidence of Russian collusion, the ostensible reason for the investigation in the first place, and no criminal charges for the president on obstruction of justice. Those behind the failed coup are furious and bent both on revenge and on diverting attention from the potential for new investigations that could uncover their own criminal culpability.

Curiously, Nadler, fellow Democrats and most of the DSM contained their outrage and instead provided cover for the Obama administration’s obstruction of justice in the Operation Fast and Furious investigations conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

That’s because they have no scruples except power.  They make Machiavelli proud.  Recall when the progressives hated the CIA, FBI and law enforcement?  I do.  They don’t hate them now because they are them.  All institutions of the FedGov are shot through with progressives, meaning that they don’t mind using that power to effect their own gain and press their own world view.

It’s the same with executive privilege under Obama and Trump.  It’s good for Obama if he was using it to hide sending guns South of the border in a scheme to bolster gun control in America.  It’s bad for Trump if they hate him and want to know more about him.

It all has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s right and wrong, or just and unjust.