Our Collective Future

For John, BLUF:  Yes, given the way the Government is waffling re Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and the way he was prosecuted, it is time for all of us to encourage our elected representatives to clean up the exceptions to our Bill of Rights protections.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Schiff protects intel 'status quo' power by sinking wide-reaching FISA reform:  Source

From The Washington Times, by Reporter Jeff Mordock, 15 March 2020.

Here is the lede plus fourI can't decide if this is about Representative Adam Schiff's irrational hatred of President Trump or his:

Attempts to rein in the government’s ability to spy on Americans fell flat after Rep. Adam B. Schiff intervened to protect the types of powers that the FBI used to go after the Trump campaign in 2016.

Mr. Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, ran roughshod over House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, whose panel had control over the battle to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, said advocates on both sides of the aisle.

The power struggle created an awkward moment in which Mr. Nadler canceled the markup of his own bill just minutes before it was scheduled.

FISA allows U.S. intelligence agencies to meet with judges behind closed doors and explain why spying is needed without anyone to question their evidence.  The process has come under scrutiny since revelations last year confirmed that the FBI abused FISA to surveil Trump campaign figure Carter Page as part of its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Liberal civil libertarians and conservative defenders of President Trump united in an attempt to curb the government’s powers with FISA reforms.  Instead, Mr. Schiff, at the urging of the intelligence community, pushed for smaller tweaks to the law.

I can't decide if this is about Representative Adam Schiff's irrational hatred of President Trump or if he is just in thralldom to the Deep State.  Neither is a good thing.

But, this is just part of the Larger issues we face, but fits easily into the angst expressed by Columnist Rod Dreher at The American Conservative (16 March 2020):

The Germs Of August

In the column Mr Dreher looks to the future and sees our liberal political system (in the old sense) being superseded by something like China's authoritarian Social Credit System.  He sees the authoritarian actions in response to the Coronavirus continuing on long after the pandemic has receded.  Here is how it ends:

It will not end there, though.  The system will stay in place after the crisis has passed, and most Americans, traumatized by the pandemic’s destruction, will be happy with that. It will then be deployed to protect the “health and safety” of the body politic by monitoring political and religious dissidents.  The logic of what we have all seen on campuses — speakers shut down because their points of view supposedly threaten the health and safety of “vulnerable minorities” — is going to be deployed by the state against dissidents of the political and religious right.  The rhetoric of public health is going to be unassailable after this crisis passes — and the political right, having destroyed itself over its Trumpian response to the crisis, will be unable to stand up against it.

It’s coming, eventually.  But I also believe that the professor is right for the shorter term about the possibility of Trump seizing emergency powers.

Either way, the end of liberalism is upon us.  I don’t think any of us foresaw that it would come from a virus.  For that matter, most people on both the left and the right don’t even see how bad it is likely to get.  They still think we’re in normal time, but in truth, it’s August 1914.

I have friend who is a hardened Democrat.  He wrote today:

Renember he ignores science and denies facts.  Whether he has simply gotten the message or not, it still is historic the damage he has done to federal organizations due to his beliefs.  He cant obscure that fact.
Nancy passed a bipartisan bill.

He didn't mention how Speaker Pelosi♠ put a poison pill in the initial bill.♥  But, we are making political progress, and I am expecting we will have an Election on 3 November.  And, if whoever the Democrats pick wins, we will have a peaceful transition of government in January 2021.  This is a pandemic, not the end of democracy as we know it.  But we all have to fight for our God given "Rights (as Englishmen)" and our Constitution.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  AKA Nancy the Ripper.
♥  She had, buried in the bill, a repeal of the Hyde Amendment.