The Keystone Cops
I'm sure you've all heard of William Jefferson by now. A Congressman from Louisiana, he's been caught red handed by the FBI accepting bribes. This whole story just blows my mind. He is [allegedly] caught on video tape accepting a briefcase containing $100,000 in cash—Can anyone think of a legitimate reason to be handed a briefcase full of cash in a restaurant? I can't—a subsequent raid of his offices finds $90,000 of that cash in the freezer—perhaps a better choice than a mattress, should your offices go up in smoke, but probably a little more suspicious than, say, a bank—and he has the balls to maintain his innocence and deny all wrong doing!
But wait! There's more! His fellow Congressmen are up in arms that he has been thusly dealt with, outraged at this obvious and flagrant violation of the Separation of Powers. Are you f*ing kidding me? Congressmen are immune from prosecution? No. Delay has proven that can't be it. Congressmen are immune from being humiliated by blatant illegal activity? We're getting closer. How is this strange law enforcement behavior? You are video taped accepting $100,000 in bribe money. Isn't the next step to obtain a warrant and search your premises while you still have the money in your possession? Congressmen are not above the law. If they are breaking the law they should be pursued and prosecuted like common criminals. End of story. Our legal system has plenty of checks already in place to stem the abuse of power.
Or does it? 'Cause wait! There's more!
As bad as people want to say the Abramoff situation was, it didn't lead to any House offices getting raided," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.1
He did not just say that. Is that really something you want to be calling attention to? This isn't a problem with Separation of Powers. It's a problem with an Executive Branch who has no concept of boundaries. While the Republican party is reeling from one scandal after another, a lone Democrat is singled out for unprecedented police action and public spectacle by a Republican Attorney General and a spokesman for a Republican political organization is kind enough—that's kind spelled s-t-u-p-i-d—to connect the dots for us. The fact that it's Republicans like Frist and Ginrich crying foul the loudest doesn't exactly dispel suspicion.
Unbelievable.