First a meme — from our pledge of allegiance: With liberty and justice for all.
Now a second meme — from the 1950s “Superman” TV show: Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Now the Bible: Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof — Righteousness Righteousness [alt. version: Justice Justice] [Shalt] Thou Pursue. Deut. 16:20.
And now a few solo words: Hillary. Yoga. Bleach. Comey. Lynch. Matter. Strzok. Page. Andy. Insurance. McCabe. Ohr. Steele. Fusion. Dossier. Yates. FISA. Flynn. Stone. Tarmac. Smollett. Kimfoxx. College. Admissions. Coxswain. CNN. MSNBC. Maddow. Behar. Lemon. Clapper. Brennan.
When a society’s justice system breaks down, the society collapses. When justice is corrupted, the society devolves into chaos. Justice is the foundation of the earth, and a nation’s population needs to know that, at some bottom-line fundamental level, the rules by which all are supposed to play are applied and enforced evenly, fairly. The image of the masked lady of justice holding the scales is evocative: justice must be blind. It may not favor the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, the favored over the unfavored. When people truly believe that they cannot get justice within the law, chaos inevitably ensues as law-breaking becomes commonplace — because there is no justice. Even an American free-market system needs to revolve around not only just economic principles but also other fair principles that include but are not limited to freedom to communicate thoughts and ideas without fear of repercussions, freedom to worship, freedom to engage in the social enterprise under the rules of fair play, and equal justice under the law. When principles like those are perverted, the social construct breaks down.
This past week has offered both a bright moment in the sun and several dark clouds in the way our system of justice operates. By now it is beyond doubt that, to some extent, we have a “two-tier” system of justice. It is otherwise inexplicable that Hillary Clinton has not yet been tried on felony charges for spoliating evidence — the bleached 33,000 emails, the smashed computer. Beyond the underlying question as to what was in those emails, whether she perpetrated felonies by unlawfully sending classified information outside secure and permitted zones, it remains that even if those emails all were about wedding dresses and yoga it is unlawful in America to destroy evidence that is sought in a proper legal investigation. Martha Stewart learned that. Despite what is portrayed on television and in movies, the failure to produce properly discoverable evidence can be grounds for serious imprisonment.
As we have learned how the Comey FBI and the Obama-Lynch Department of Justice conspired to redefine the Clinton investigation as a mere “matter,” how they drafted the terms of her exoneration before the investigation even took off, how they arranged to grant immunity from prosecution to a swath of critical witnesses who could have been leveraged to reveal truths in exchange for such immunity, how they even allowed some of them to sit in and listen to the questioning of Hillary so that they would be able to synchronize their own storylines, we emerge disgusted. She got away with the missing billing records of the Rose Law Firm, Travelgate, the Cattle Futures, so many other lies and scandals. She seems to have gotten away with the corruption of leveraging the Clinton Foundation as a vehicle to get rich personally by allotting special favors as Secretary of State to people who paid for access. She and her husband may even have gotten away with compromising some of America’s uranium supply. This lifetime of exemption from the laws that the rest of us must follow does not breed jealousy — none of us would want to exchange our lives for that of Hillary Clinton. But it breeds dismay that, if she is exempt from the laws and enjoys a different level of justice, such profound unfairness gnaws at the core of our laws. Yes, to a degree she has paid a certain penalty for her decades of corruption. She is despised deeply and therefore was denied her dream of a lifetime — the Presidency. However, she has not paid the price that the justice system has imposed on others who removed secure and confidential emails and other governmental communications without authorization.
In like measure, we have been witness to the injustice and cruelty of the two-year Mueller “witch hunt.” The Russian Collusion Hoax caught a wide number of human fish in its net on “process crimes,” ensnared misstating one fact or another and thus imprisoned on perjury charges that never get filed against so many other far more despicable actors. Even Paul Manafort, who under normal circumstances deserves punishment for tax fraud and related crimes, ultimately also deserves the Presidential pardon or commutation awaiting him after the November 2020 elections because he was not caught “fair and square.” Rather than being pursued by a suspicious IRS that fairly wondered about his taxes, he was hounded by a team of prosecutors that went after the Trump Campaign manager who righted a tottering ship at a critical moment in the campaign, secured the delegates to win the nomination, coordinated a fabulous convention that avoided predicted chaos, and set Mr. Trump on the path to November victory. That is how Mr. Manafort’s defalcations were uncovered, and that is why he deserves a commutation, if not outright pardon.
The ubiquitous injustice cries out for so much more to be righted. Now that Mr. Trump’s patriotism has been investigated, it is time to investigate John Brennan’s loyalties. He voted for Gus Hall, the Communist Party candidate, to be President of the United States. Although Obama named him CIA head — itself an act worthy of a Special Counsel — what do we know of this man who calls others “treasonous”? Has he lied under oath? Has James Clapper? Has Jim Comey? Did Comey break the law by leaking confidential FBI information, notes obtained in his capacity as FBI chief, to the New York Times? Did Loretta Lynch break the law? How was the Steele Dossier composed? Funded? Will Steele face American justice? What exactly was told to the FISA court? Did Samantha Power or Sally Yates or Andrew McCabe or Bruce Ohr break the law? How was Hillary Clinton and the Clinton campaign involved? Was there an interplay with the Clinton Foundation? And is it conceivably possible that all this went on during the Obama Administration without Obama knowing about it? And if Obama knew: “what did he know, and when did he know it?” And what about his Vice President? Are there other dirty players whose names we do not yet know, who remain as Deep State moles within the FBI and CIA?
Equal justice under the law cries out for a powerful investigation equal to the two-year Mueller investigation. Yes, the Republican Senate can investigate, but we have seen the limitations of Congressional investigations: they mostly are for political show but do not result in punishing a Lois Lerner or an Eric Holder. Yes, Inspector General Michael Horowitz can investigate. But if “equal justice under the law” means anything in this context, nothing short of a two-year $25-40 million Special Counsel investigation — the kind that runs 675 days, entailing 19 lawyers, assisted by 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff, where 42 people are interrogated or are summoned before a grand jury, with 2,800 subpoenas issued, 500 search warrants executed, with 500 witnesses and 13 requests to foreign governments for information — nothing short of that would constitute equal justice under the law.
The Prophet Amos spoke poetically of “Justice [alt. version: Judgment] roll[ing] down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Amos 5:24. These are important times because social gravity also pulls the waters of injustice at the top-most echelons of government to roll downstream such that corruption flows into greater society like a mighty brook. We are a good people under law, and yet we see the corruption of the Hollywood-celebrity class and others among the fabulously wealthy who have learned from actual life experience that the liberal laws and taxes for which they advocate do not apply to them. They speak the liberal mantra of needing to raise our taxes to pay for leftist “social justice” programs and social-engineering schemes popular among the glitterati, but they and their corporations steer clear of their new taxes. They do not take the high-speed rails but fly in the private jets that pollute. They impose “affirmative action” quotas on college admissions, further demanding additional set-asides for children of those here illegally — but, with so many fewer seats available in college for the hard-working kids of hard-working taxpayers who do not fit into an intersectional pigeon-hole, these “progressive” elites are not disadvantaged because they then clandestinely pay bribes to professional college-admissions-coyotes who smuggle their Tide-pod-ingesting airheads into college.
Yes, some of these despicable cheaters finally have been unmasked. But the “jury is out” as to whether they will face justice — indeed, as to whether they even will face a jury. In a just world, every single one of those kids already would have been expelled from the colleges. “But the kids are innocent; they didn’t know.” They didn’t know? They posed for pictures in a scull or as a coxswain, and they did not know? They sat for scholastic exams and were given extra time, authorized by medical passes they presented for diseases and illnesses they did not have, and they did not know?
We await justice. As we await it for Jussie Smollett. Every person under our system of laws is innocent until proven guilty. Someone like Smollett is entitled to his day in court to clear his name. But not only is he entitled. Rather, the greater society, too, is entitled to his day in court. If he is guilty of doing what he reportedly did, he could have ignited race wars. The hoax was aimed at inducing greater society to deem Trump supporters uniformly as racist, even as Klansmen lynching people of color. It was not just a stupid April Fool’s Joke gone wrong. This was an evil so vile that, if true, the man belongs in prison for years. That would be equal justice under the law.
His sudden release seems so terribly evil and corrupt. If he had been spared prison as part of a plea deal entailing a fine of perhaps a quarter million dollars, perhaps a year or two of real community service, and perhaps five years of supervised release, so be it. Such a deal would parallel the unsatisfying plea deals that happen all too often. But a complete exoneration, lack of remorse, cleansing of his record, sealing of all case documents? This “Chicago way” reeks of corruption in a city whose name is synonymous with corruption, regardless of color, from Al Capone through the Daley machines and the 1960 vote count, to this day. Five Illinois governors in the past half century or so ended up in prison: William Stratton, Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan, and Rod Blagojevich. When an Illinois Secretary of State died, they found $800,000 cash stuffed in shoe boxes. Even a state Attorney General, William Scott, ultimately went to prison for tax fraud.
When there is no equal justice under the law, a society degrades into a Sodom. By now, it is common knowledge that Obama rose within Chicago politics by associating with the likes of Tony Rezko, who arranged Obama’s property acquisition, even as his wife netted a suspiciously high-paying hospital job in tandem with his rise in state politics. His Illinois U.S. Senate election was marked by the unsealing of embarrassing divorce files, first exposing his Democrat primary opponent’s sordid but secret past, then exposing his Republican opponent’s sordid but secret past. The Chicago way. Now Kim Foxx, graduate of Southern Illinois University School of Law, ranked among the bottom ranked law schools by U.S. News, enters for her fifteen minutes.
There must be justice for Jussie Smollett, for Kim Foxx, and thus for our society. The federal Department of Justice can look into it; they have spent so many decades investigating corruption in Chicago that they do not even need a GPS app to find the addresses, and they probably have all the key phone numbers, including the prisons, in speed dial.
For the sake of our greater society, we need that Special Counsel to be named in Washington, we need those kids expelled from the colleges and their parents fitted for wardrobe and roles in “Orange Is the New Black,” and we need the Smollett-Foxx “matter” investigated in Chicago. And we need it in weeks, Mr. Attorney General, not months.
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