The FBI has always been a tool of political suppression.

WHEN THE FBI came out with a report on Hillary Clinton weeks before the 2016 election, Democrats were livid.

But so were Republicans… The report said that even though she had committed a crime by negligently using a personal computer for state business, she would not be charged.

Democrats later cheered the FBI as the Mueller Probe began investigating Trump. Investigations are the same thing as a guilty verdict, right?

And Republicans fumed when it surfaced that two agents exchanged anti-Trump text messages. They even discussed ways to subvert the presidential election and choose the winner.

And now Democrats are back to accusing the FBI of being a partisan tool used by whoever is in power. That’s because an FBI investigation could not prove a 36-year-old sexual assault accusation true.

Clearly, no one feels super confident in the FBI. And of course, we shouldn’t. They’re sketchy as all hell.

J. Edgar Hoover set the tone when, as Director of the FBI, he compiled a list of supposedly disloyal Americans. [He fingered a few Communists — and even wrote a bestseller about them — but never once criticized or mentioned the group that created and funded Communism. — Ed.] He’s famous for his enemies lists, in fact. But you didn’t have to break any laws to be considered an enemy.

Let’s not forget that the FBI murdered Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge. And they probably assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. — they definitely blackmailed him and encouraged him to kill himself.

More recently the FBI spent three years covering up evidence that they sent snipers to surround Bundy Ranch. They conspired with the Bureau of Land Management to suppress evidence favorable to the Bundys.

The FBI also performs warrantless searches of computers using paid informants on The Geek Squad.

This looks even sketchier in light of their standard operating procedure for entrapping would-be terrorists. They usually provide the plot, equipment, and fake explosives, and then arrest the suspect at the scene.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh also has an interesting relationship with the FBI…

He helped cover up for the FBI’s intimidation of his own witness while investigating the “suicide” of Clinton aide Vincent Foster.

So just consider how untrustworthy the FBI is. And consider how deeply the FBI has infiltrated every area of politics.

The FBI is rotten. And they spread that rot to everything they touch. And they touch everything in the US government.

Therefore, the entire US government is rotten.

You can’t trust the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the top law enforcement agency in the USA. And you can’t trust anything that comes out of the government they have infiltrated.

And we know that it was standard operating procedure from the FBI’s inception to amass damning dossiers on politicians. Then they used blackmail to control them.

Now they can simply make some accusation up and investigate it… which people will assume means guilt.

But the best thing that could happen to America is that we utterly and completely stop trusting this government.

They have proven themselves to be manipulative liars time and time again.

It is impossible to separate the truth from the lies, the real investigations from the political hit jobs.

Lack of trust, lack of faith in this government is a good thing. It brings the responsibility back to you and me.

* * *

There is a dangerous myth that permeates the political arena that government agencies and bureaucrats can somehow be non-political and independent.

How absurd. On the one hand, there are obvious political appointments, like Eric Holder as Attorney General under Obama, or Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State under Trump. Each was clearly chosen to advance the interests of the President, Holder for his radical leftist views and Tillerson for his business ties.

And then there are scarily independent agencies like the CIA and NSA who pretty much do whatever they want, regardless of who heads the Department.

But the FBI is a sketchy mix of independence and politics, and it always has been. From its inception, the first FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made the agency a hotbed of political suppression, with arbitrary arrests and warrantless searches — all “good” if you didn’t like the people being targeted, like commies, right? But a little different when your friends and family and political allies are the victims, as many people have discovered. But, oh, what precedents were set back in the good old days!

But that’s not how the mainstream media are selling it. Will Trump Be The First to Politicize the FBI? asks Politico Magazine. Their concern is that Trump might appoint someone to the position with a political background, rather than a law enforcement background.

From its founding over a century ago until Tuesday afternoon, when James Comey was summarily fired as director, the FBI has been led exclusively by nonpartisan career law enforcement professionals with no background in elected politics.

The bureau, in fact, has been perhaps the last bastion of nonpolitical leadership in Washington–an agency whose powers are so extensive and potentially damaging to American citizens that it has been kept clear of direct political influence.

Of course, this statement is ridiculous; you cannot separate a government agency from politics. They are conflating not having been elected with being nonpartisan or apolitical. Nonsense.

But really Politico inadvertently touches on the main problem with the FBI: It was created to target Americans domestically. The FBI was given broad powers that were not just “potentially damaging” to American citizens — that is exactly who they targeted.

Hoover had a plan, which was never put into practice, to suspend habeas corpus and detain thousands of Americans for not being loyal enough to the United States government. For being a “nonpolitical” leader, he certainly did a lot to suppress political opposition to those in power.

But Hoover was just doing the only thing he knew. That is how he started in government, during WWI.

President Woodrow Wilson created the political monster, appointing Hoover to the War Emergency Board during WWI and tasking him with arresting dissidents and foreigners without trial who “seemed disloyal” to the United States. The raids took place without search warrants, and even though Hoover was the man behind the “Palmer Raids” he escaped the political backlash and was even appointed to clean up the agency — which would soon come to be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

J. Edgar Hoover shaped the FBI to be the organization it is today.

…he created the Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. The group conducted a series of covert, and oftentimes illegal, investigations designed to discredit or disrupt radical political organizations…

Hoover also used COINTELPRO’s operations to conduct his own personal vendettas against political adversaries in the name of national security…

In 1971, COINTELPRO’s tactics were revealed to the public, showing that the agency’s methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planted evidence and false rumors leaked on suspected groups and individuals. Despite the harsh criticism Hoover and the Bureau received, he remained its director until his death on May 2, 1972, at the age of 77.

Politico actually recognizes the fact that Hoover abused his power at the FBI, but still, goes on to say the organization has never been political.

The FBI’s power over the life, freedom and liberty of the American people is unparalleled in U.S. government, and at key points in the bureau’s history–from Hoover’s attempts to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr., to its pursuit of political activists in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s –we have seen the cost of the FBI’s abuse of Americans’ civil liberties…

In the FBI’s entire centurylong history, it has never had an expressly political director. Hoover, for all his machinations as director, had actually spent his career at the Justice Department.

Politico talks about finding a director who is above reproach, who has a stellar record, and who will keep the agency independent and trustworthy. Their solution is to simply find someone who is non-partisan, and who has always worked in the Justice Department… just like J. Edgar Hoover.

If a political organization requires the “right person in power” in order to not be corrupt, then it is a bad organization. It is dangerous, and should not exist because it is impossible to find angels to put into those positions of power. [I would put it somewhat differently: As a very wise man once said, there is no substitute for honorable men. And the American political System rewards and advances only the most dishonorable kinds of men (and women). — Ed]

Perhaps the mainstream media are more concerned over who will be targeted by the FBI. Maybe Politico is really not afraid of the FBI targeting innocent Americans. After all, it has always done that, and who cares.

But what if it turned into a tool of one political faction to be used against another political faction? That’s what they’re really afraid of.

It would be more honest if Politico’s article was summed up like this:

The FBI has long been an enemy of the citizens of the United States and abused their authority by suppressing dissent and intimidating political opposition to the System. But now, the FBI might start to be used against us in the elite political class. That’s totally unacceptable. The only proper targets of the FBI are peasants who don’t know their place.

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Source: based on articles at The Daily Bell

WHILE THERE have been Government assaults on the First Amendment throughout the history of America, 2010 featured bipartisan attacks on all major forms of media.

Congress proposed legislation giving the President what many have said is a “kill switch” on the Internet enabling him to shut it down in the event of a “national cyber emergency.” A national cyber emergency is defined in the legislation as an “actual or imminent action to exploit a cyber vulnerability.”  In defending the law, Sen. Joe Lieberman referenced China’s right to shut down the Internet as reason to pass similar legislation in the United States.

“Cyber war is going on in some sense right now… and we need this capacity in a time of war” and “the President needs to have the ability to disconnect parts of the Internet.” Lieberman went on to say that the President wouldn’t do this “every day” and would only do it in the event of a “catastrophic event.”  Lieberman said Internet users need to “relax” and that “China can disconnect parts of its Internet in the case of war; we need to have that here, too.”

In December FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, during a speech at Columbia University, called for a “public values test” for every broadcast station as a condition of broadcast license renewal.

The test would include stations committing to news and public affairs programming with an emphasis on local civic affairs. Copps’ goal is that at least 25 percent of a station’s content would reflect local issues. Copps would like to require that local content reflects “the diverse interests and needs of the community.” He complains that currently, diversity of programming suffers and minorities “are ignored.” Copps also states he wishes to increase Black ownership of television stations. Critics have said the regulations would be a back door approach to reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine….

There have even been government proposals to regulate print media.  Republican State Senator Bruce Patterson of Michigan proposed a plan allowing the government to license journalists in much the same way as hairdressers, mechanics, and plumbers are licensed.  Patterson’s proposal sought to ensure that reporters operate by ethical standards acceptable to a government-run board.

Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission released a report titled “The Reinvention of Journalism,” which stated that more news Web sites did not mean more choice for consumers, and decried what they called a lack of local news coverage.  The report went on to list several recommendations to help save the ailing print newspaper industry — including the possibility of government subsidies.

Other proposals recommend that once an organization breaks a news story, that that story be investigated, with other news sites being prohibited from covering the same story for a set time.

Read the full article at the Greeley Gazette

ON APRIL 5, 1926, reporter and literary critic H.L. Mencken was arrested on Boston Common for selling a magazine that had been banned by the New England Watch and Ward Society, the city’s self-appointed moral censors. A fierce defender of free speech, Mencken had traveled to Boston with the express intention of getting himself arrested. The minute he sold a copy of the magazine, the vice squad took him into custody. Not everyone in Boston agreed with the Watch and Ward Society, and the next day a judge ruled in Mencken’s favor. He was acquitted on all charges. The victory was short-lived, however. Boston continued to lead the nation in the banning of books for another 30 years.

Background

The phrase “Banned in Boston” has its origins in the early 1900s. Boston may have trailed New York in most ways, but it led the nation in practicing censorship based on moral grounds. The driving force behind the city’s puritanical purges was the Watch and Ward Society, founded in 1878 to “watch and ward off evildoers.”

According to the Globe, during the heyday of the Watch and Ward, “the Boston Public Library kept books the society considered objectionable in a locked room, the Museum of Fine Arts kept part of its Asian collection behind closed doors, and the label ‘banned in Boston’ became a selling point for salacious books from New York to San Francisco.” The members of the Watch and Ward Society encountered little resistance – until they targeted H.L. Mencken.

Known as “the Bard of Baltimore,” where he was born in 1880, Mencken rejected his Methodist upbringing and made it a habit, in the words of one biographer, “to speak out forcefully, pungently, and satirically against the follies of religion.” He was particularly critical of religious fundamentalists, whom he blamed for attempting to use the power of government to enforce their moral views. The passage of Prohibition in 1920 enraged him, as he believed deeply that people should pursue their happiness with as little government interference as possible. Censorship also angered him. In 1922 Mencken declared, “I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth.”

A skillful reporter, Mencken earned a national reputation covering the Scopes “Monkey” trial in Tennessee for the Baltimore Sun. He skewered attorney William Jennings Bryan for proposing that teaching evolution should be a crime and depicted him as a religious “fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.” He championed Clarence Darrow as a defender of free speech and the Bill of Rights.

One of several magazines he edited was the American Mercury, which frequently included pieces critical of established social conventions and authorities. He loved to lampoon the self-righteous enforcers of morality in Boston. He famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

Mencken relished the chance to take on the Watch and Ward Society; in doing so, he was striking a blow to the heart of Boston’s Protestant elite. The Society was founded in 1878 to fight corruption in business and politics; in 1906 it shifted its attention to defending conventional morals and became a “citizen’s vigilance” group protecting Boston from vice.

City officials did not question the Watch and Ward Society’s right to define what was and was not obscene. It reviewed books, plays, and other forms of artistic expression, looking for moral corruption. If the Society deemed an item obscene, it would notify local booksellers and news dealers. Under a gentleman’s agreement with city police, the vice squad would arrest anyone who continued selling the offending work. A person who purchased a banned book risked prosecution for violating the state’s obscenity laws.

The April 1926 issue of the American Mercury was irresistible to the Watch and Ward Society. It contained an ad for a book deemed obscene and an essay proposing a “New View of Sex” as purely “a pastime for leisure hours.” But it was “Hatrack,” a short story by Herbert Asbury that generated the most notice. Asbury (later the author of The Gangs of New York) wrote a purportedly true account of a prostitute from his hometown in Missouri who regularly sought forgiveness at the local Methodist church. The congregation shunned her and, unsaved, she continued her life of sin, meeting her Catholic customers in the Protestant cemetery and her Protestant customers in the Catholic graveyard.

When the Watch and Ward Society immediately banned the issue as obscene, Mencken boarded a train for Boston. Once in the city, he orchestrated a meeting with John Chase, the Society’s director, at the “Brimstone Corner” on Boston Common. With police, press, and a rowdy crowd of students on hand, Mencken offered Chase a copy of the magazine. Chase gave him a half-dollar piece (which Mencken bit for effect). Within minutes, the Boston vice squad placed H.L. Mencken under arrest.

In court, the judge found that the magazine was not obscene and acquitted Mencken on all charges. Mencken then sued the Watch and Ward Society for illegal restraint of trade. Again he was successful. A federal judge ruled that it was the responsibility of prosecutors, not private citizens, to censor literature.

H.L. Mencken was not quite done with lawsuits. Just a few days after his victory in Boston, the Solicitor of the U.S. Post Office declared that, despite the judge’s ruling, that issue of the American Mercury was obscene and therefore sending it through the mails was a federal offense. Mencken responded by suing the U.S. Post Office. A month later, the courts dismissed the case on a technicality since the magazine had already been mailed and delivered. Mencken was disappointed; he had hoped his suit would become a landmark free-speech case.

H.L. Mencken died in 1956. By then the Watch and Ward Society had changed its name to New England Citizens Crime Commission and shifted its focus to gambling. The organization gained national attention in 1962 when it helped CBS News expose Boston police involvement in betting. A Miami newspaper reported, “Not since the British imposed a tax on tea have Bostonians been so aroused.”

Sources

Boston Globe, January 1, 2005.

“Banned in Boston,” in Newspaper Story: One Hundred Years of the Boston Globe, by Louis M. Lyons (Belknap Press, 1971).

The Political Places of Boston, by Clinton Richmond (Muddy River Press, 2004).

The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout (Harper Collins, 2002).

from The Bibliophile Bullpen

APPENDIX: MENCKEN’S RECOLLECTIONS

From “The Hatrack Case” by H.L. Mencken (1937)

As I reflected upon the matter it became evident that something would have to be done, for if [John] Chase [head of the Watch and Ward Society] were permitted to get away with this minor assault he would be encouraged to plan worse ones, and, what is more, other wowsers elsewhere would imitate him…

It was accordingly arranged that Hays and I should meet in Boston on Monday morning, April 5 — one week after the suppression of the magazine, and I should there sell a copy of the April issue on the Common, and defy Chase to order my arrest…

[My lawyer Herbert B.] Ehrmann told me that the first business in hand was to take out a peddler’s license. It had to be obtained from the Superintendent of Peddlers in the Boston Health Department, and getting it took some time. Meanwhile Ehrmann had made contact with Chase, and tried to induce him to meet me in public and buy a copy of the April issue. It was a difficult job getting his consent. In the past he had always had his own way in Boston, but now an apparently bellicose stranger had come to town to challenge him, with a lawyer of national prominence to brew the legal medicine, and he was considerably alarmed….

He finally agreed, though still very reluctantly, to meet me at 2PM on April 5 at the corner of Park and Tremont — the celebrated Brimstone Corner… I got [there] a little before two o’clock, and found a huge crowd assembled — largely made up, it appeared, of Harvard undergraduates. …I made my way to the agreed rendezvous with some difficulty, for the crowd was very dense, and called for Chase. A youngish man stepped up, said that he was Chase’s assistant, and offered to buy the test magazine. When I refused to sell it to him he offered to produce evidence that he was the accredited agent of the Watch and Ward society, but I still refused, and demanded that Chase appear in person.

There was more delay here, but then cries of, “Here he is!” were set up, and he slowly pushed his way toward me. With him were Captain George W. Patterson, chief of the Boston Vice Squad, and a young officer in plain clothes. The actual sale took but a few seconds. Chase identified himself, I offered him a copy of the magazine, he handed me a silver half dollar, I bit it as if to make sure it was a good coin, and Chase said to Patterson, “I order this man’s arrest.”

Garret then tapped me on the arm and the laborious march to police headquarter began. They were in a little court called Pemberton Square, only four blocks away, but Park Street, which we had to traverse, was crowded …When we finally got into the little headquarters building, I was led to the second floor… and there booked on a charge of violating Chapter 272, Section 28, of the Public General Laws of Massachusetts by possessing and selling obscene literature.

________

Quoted in The Editor, The Bluenose and the Prostitute: H.L. Mencken’s History of the ‘Hatrack’ Censorship Case, ed. by Carl Bode (Roberts Rhinehart, 1988).