MARK STEYN: TREASON AND CORRUPTION
http://www.steynonline.com/6897/treason-and-corruption
At a so-called Easter “prayer breakfast”, President Obama, as is his wont, took another swipe at Christians:
“On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that, as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that sometimes, when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”
Each to his own. I get concerned that, as the President was lecturing those Christians less perfect than him, some 150 students were slaughtered at Garissa University in Kenya for no other reason than that they were Christian. Had I been at that prayer breakfast, I would have walked out in protest.
Oh, wait, you can’t do that with the President of the United States. The joint’s in lockdown. So, okay, I’d be stuck in there until the 40-car motorcade had left and it’s safe to reopen the public thoroughfares. But I would have booed. Is it too much to expect freeborn Americans occasionally to show a little irritation at both the President’s condescension and, given that some of the oldest Christian communities on earth are currently being exterminated, his ghastly bad taste?
~Christians are also enjoined not to raise a false report, nor put thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Are those operational for this president? Last June I said of Bowe Bergdahl that he was “a deserter at best and at worst enemy collaborator”. It took officialdom another ten months to conclude he was a deserter; now they’re figuring it’s time to reveal that he was an enemy collaborator:
A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night.
So the Government of the United States had reason to believe six years ago that Bergdahl was a traitor. As I asked last year and again only two weeks ago, why, knowing what he knew, did Obama stage that Rose Garden ceremony? Why did Susan Rice tell the American people that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction”? Why did Obama put his hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness?
Setting aside the propriety of trading five Taliban A-listers for a traitor, it’s impossible to look at that Rose Garden theatre as anything other than a conscious deception of the American people by the President. Why would he do that?
Launching his presidential campaign by channeling Ronald Reagan, Senator Rand Paul called for “strong verification measures” with the Government of Iran. Yeah, that’s a great idea. And if the “strong verification measures” work with the Government of Iran, maybe we could try putting them into place with the Government of the United States. Until President Obama explains the fraudulent ceremony he staged for Bergdahl, there’s no reason for anyone to believe a word he says about anything ever again.
~For myself, I’d like a candidate who’s serious about ending the corruption. A republic has by definition to be virtuous – or it’s a banana republic. This country has a chief law enforcement officer who prosecutes Senator Menendez, a Democrat senator who made the mistake of crossing the President, but won’t prosecute Lois Lerner, a member of the supposedly “non-partisan” civil service who used the bureaucracy to target the President’s enemies. When you’ve got a corrupt attorney-general and a corrupt revenue collector, you don’t really need much else.
Nevertheless, even in the murk of the Obama sewer, the case of the retiring Senate Minority Leader is curious. Harry Reid is apparently now blind in one eye because of an accident with his “resistance band” while “working out” on New Year’s Day. If this is true, why are Democrats not calling for federal regulation of resistance bands and mandatory licensing of resistance-band users after three years of training?
Reid’s story is obviously bunk, and always was. And then, three months after somebody takes the resistance band to him, the second most powerful Democrat in Washington, and the very definition of the careerist timeserving hack who’ll stay in “public service” until they carry him out by the handles, mysteriously decides it’s time to hang up his boots. So whoever did this to him managed to take out the Senate Minority Leader.
The Capitol Police, who transported Reid to his local hospital and then – presumably because of the severity of his injuries – to a larger medical facility, are supposed to work for the American people but they’re stonewalling on Breitbart News’ routine requests for information – and none of the legacy media are even bothering to ask. Harry Reid is in the fortunate position of so many career politicians who, after a lifetime of “public service” at relatively modest rates of remuneration, has emerged a remarkably wealthy man. And now a powerful Beltway operator has just been resistance-banded into early retirement. Isn’t there a great story here for a Washington Post or New York Times reporter minded to dig a little?
~The corruption of the republic goes all the way down. Four years ago, I wrote:
The Atlanta Public Schools system has spent the last decade systemically cheating on its tests. Not the students, but the superintendent, and the union, and 38 principals, and at least 178 teachers — whoops, pardon me, “educators” — and some 44 of the 56 school districts. Teachers held “changing parties” at their homes at which they sat around with extra supplies of erasers correcting their students’ test answers in order to improve overall scores and qualify for “No Child Left Behind” federal funding that could be sluiced into maintaining their lavish remuneration. Let’s face it, it’s easier than teaching, right?
The APS Human Resources honcho Millicent Few illegally had an early report into test-tampering destroyed. So APS not only got the federal gravy but was also held up to the nation at large as a heartwarming, inspirational example of how large urban school districts can reform themselves and improve educational opportunities for their children. And its fake test scores got its leader, Beverly Hall, garlanded with the National Superintendent of the Year Award, the Administrator of the Year Award, the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Keystone Award for Leadership in Education, the Concerned Black Clergy Education Award, the American Association of School Administrators Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award, and a zillion other phony-baloney baubles with which the American edu-fraud cartel scratches its own back.
In reality, Beverly Hall’s Atlanta Public Schools system was in the child-abuse business: It violated the education of its students in order to improve its employees’ cozy sinecures. The whole rotten, stinking school system is systemically corrupt from the superintendent down. But what are the chances of APS being closed down? How many of those fraudulent non-teachers will waft on within the system until their lucrative retirements?
But on the bottom of the corruption ladder there are apparently still consequences:
Eleven former school teachers have been convicted for their involvement in a scheme to falsify student test scores…
Eleven were guilty of racketeering and face lengthy prison terms, with a 12th acquitted, in one of the biggest ever cheating scandals in the US.
Thirty-five people were originally charged in 2013, with many pleading guilty and some testifying at the trial. Scores more were implicated.
“The cheating had been going on so long, we considered it part of our jobs,” Jackie Parks, a former teacher who was a witness for the prosecution, told the New York Times in 2013.
The school system’s superintendent, Beverly Hall, died last month of breast cancer, and never appeared at the trial after arguing she was too sick.
~I’ve written many times about the disturbing tendency of too many officers to police the citizenry unto death. All the stories are different, and they’re all the same – if only in the reaction of departmental and other municipal officials. On Saturday night Walter Scott died in North Charleston after being pulled over for a busted tail light. Here is how Channel Four reported what they called – in the preferred euphemism – “an officer-involved shooting”:
The incident began about 9:30 a.m. Saturday when Officer Michael Slager, 33, pulled 50-year-old Walter Scott over for a broken tail light at the corner of Remount and Craig roads.
Police and witnesses say Scott tried to run from Slager before turning to fight for the officer’s Taser. It was during that scuffle that the officer fired his service weapon, fatally wounding Scott.
According to an incident report, officers heard Slager say over the radio that he had deployed his Taser and “seconds later” he said “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser.”
Attorney David Aylor released a statement Monday that reiterated the police report.
“This is a very tragic event for all of the families,” Aylor said. “I believe once the community hears all the facts of this shooting, they’ll have a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding this investigation. Officer Slager believes he followed all the proper procedures and policies of the North Charleston Police Department.”
And then the phone video showed up:
Officer Slager has now been charged with murder. But, without the video, everyone would still be insisting it was a routine by-the-book justifiable tail-light homicide, and that initial ABC report would have held.
Good cops should insist on lapel cameras. It’s in their interest, and ours.
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