Yochi Dreazen:
Taken together, it’s easy to come away with the conclusion that the FBI is out to get Hillary Clinton. The truth, though, is far more complicated. The FBI isn’t a monolith, and it isn’t the bureau as a whole that is targeting Clinton. Experts who study the FBI believe the leaks are coming from a small clique of agents who profoundly distrust Clinton and believe she deserves to be punished for what they see as a long record of ethically dubious behavior.
“Comey has unleashed a lot of the bad behavior by people down the line by signaling that it’s okay to treat Hillary Clinton differently,” says Matthew Miller, a Democrat who formerly served as a spokesperson for the Justice Department. “There certainly seem to be FBI agents who have taken a really hard partisan line and are just kind of blinded by their anger and hatred toward Hillary Clinton.”
The recent series of FBI leaks are particularly worrisome because they raise the prospect of a state security agency equipped with the full resources and investigative might of the federal government working to interfere in the elections. The FBI is so powerful — it can, with court approval, issue subpoenas, tap phones, intercept emails and conduct round-the-clock surveillance — that even a small coterie of its agents can find ways of influencing the political process. That’s the kind of thing we normally see in autocracies like Egypt or Turkey, not here in the United States.
It’s impossible to know how many agents support Trump, and the anti-Clinton leaks are likely the result of only a tiny minority of the bureau. Still, the fact that a small fraction of the FBI’s workforce has felt free to take steps that could impact the election is profoundly alarming. Comey stumbled by personally entering the political fray. His bigger mistake may have come from signaling to other agents that they could do the same.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Top Boehner lieutenant admits House Republicans exist purely for Mitch McConnell's pleasure:
Rep. Pete Sessions, who as Chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee is one of House Speaker John Boehner's top lieutenants, admits that the only thing that House Republicans are trying to do this year is play political games to win the U.S. Senate:
"Everything we do in this body should be about messaging to win back the Senate,” Sessions said. “That’s it. If you don’t want Benghazis to happen or you want an investigation for Benghazi, if you want an investigation on the IRS as opposed to the excuses that [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-Nev.] is all about, if you do not like what’s happening at the [National Security Agency], then you gain the Senate.”
Yeah, sure, if Mitch McConnell were majority leader of the United States Senate, then Benghazi never would have happened, Darrell Issa never would have invented the IRS scandal, and the NSA wouldn't have spied on anybody, ever, anytime, in any place. And what's more: Probably bananas wouldn't be under siege from spiders
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