The Suicide Pact as a Political Argument

#PutiPoodle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

This is an interesting starting point:

If the Justice Department and the FBI knowingly used an unreliably biased witness to win a FISA warrant against Carter Page, violating his civil liberties in the process, you would therefore expect that there are some judges on the FISC who are concerned. They, after all, are the ones who were misled. They are the ones who signed warrants and renewals based on shoddy information. Conversely, if the judges on the FISC are not hopping mad, you might take that as evidence that they don’t, in fact, feel misled and that the Justice Department and FBI conduct was, after all, reasonably within the obligations of lawyers and investigators before the court.

(Wittes)

One particularly difficult aspect of the #TrumpRussia scandal is the manner in which the context of dispute overshadows history itself. It is telling, in comparison, that Democrats have come to defend and advocate the individual mandate, but also that Republicans and conservatives turned on their own idea; at some point, we ought to take the note about insincerity. It has, for years, also been true that a liberal political relationship to law enforcement is fraught, to say the least; but it is also true that conservatives have simultaneously drummed up tough law-and-order talk while relying more and more on conspiracy theories denigrating and defaming law enforcement institutions. Naturally, the allegedly liberal party finds itself defending the law enforcement agency and agent that, to the one, undertook irregular actions wrecking the Democratic presidential candidate, and that alone ought to be boggling. To the other, if we set aside Donald Trump for a moment, the FBI is also the agency that reviews its own duty-related killings, and has found itself to be perfect, something like a hundred fifty out of a hundred fifty. Given a day in court to indict all the sleazy tactics of a powerfully effective eugenic “drug war” any liberal would find the FBI in line to defend the necessity of allowing law enforcement to behave that way. Yet the spectacle continues apace, with Republicans hollering until they wheeze and Democrats breathlessly defending one of the most controversial law enforcement agencies on the planet. Without this extraordinary, self-inflicted presidential scandal requiring our priority, what is up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, anyway? Federal law enforcement is still law enforcement.

Just as Democrats finding themselves rallying to defend the individual mandate ought to be significant of something about how we reached this point, or Jade Helm leaving liberals to consider posturing an ostensible general defense of the American military; or, if we can remember back to 2009, the conservative roll from patriotism and the indignity of protesting against the president to the patriotic necessity of threatening the president with firearms; or, hey, we might consider decades of conservative conspiracism including the National Rifle Association, and then wonder whether it will be law enforcement or the military confiscating the guns; so, too, might we wonder at the trend of conservatives behaving so badly that others need to do their jobs for them.

Your War on Drugs: Tennessee Anal Probes

Sure, it’s clickbait, we know. But it’s also a real issue. Radley Balko explains the thing about the Oak Ridge anal probes:

Last year we learned of three incidents in New Mexico in which motorists pulled over for moving violations were subjected to forced anal cavity searches, x-rays and even colonoscopies because police suspected they were hiding drugs in their bodies. I pointed out in January that the practice has also been used in Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kansas.

It looks like Oak Ridge, Tenn., has been doing it, too.

Right. Anyway, Balko continues:

This is actually the second time a forcible anal probe has been challenged in a Tennessee courtroom. In 2011, the same doctor and the same police department performed a similar procedure on a man, also after a traffic stop.

Part of the Problem

To the one, it is very easy to pick on the Huffington Post; to the other, well, yeah, never mind. The question is what the historians and anthropologists will write about this period of human communication. Naturally, we jest; the real question is whether or not the journal article can be published in under sixty characters.

What? Really? Show of hands: Who thinks Twitter will last that long?

Alright, then. Follow-up: How long before 140 is too long?

Uh-huh. See how that works?

Still, the great testament of Huffington Post and other online news sites will be the consumerist outlook; news and information, once considered vital to civic function, are now merely mass-produced trinkets, the inconvenient content one must necessarily tease consumers with in order to facilitate the commercial transactions that are a news organization’s real reasons for existing.

True, it sounds grim. But look at what people are reading.