Sombody wants to be president

Newt Gingrich wants to be president. You can tell because he is doing things to put himself out in front of the public. One of his attention getting devises is a short commentary that airs on some radio stations. I hear it on Sirius Patriot Channel in the morning.

This morning’s commentary is a good example of why Gingrich has no chance of being elected and why this is a good thing.

Newt began by saying that if Congressman “Freezer Bill” Jefferson was guilty that he should be punished, but added that we should not throw the constitution out with the congressman. At this point I knew that he was going to whine about the FBI’s raid on Jefferson’s Capitol Hill office. I was correct. He made the “separation of powers” argument; saying that in the future that the executive branch (here we were supposed to picture President Hillary) could intimidate congressional opponents by staging similar raids.

Of course the former Speaker was blowing smoke. He deliberately failed to mention that the FBI took great pains to respect the separation of powers. The search was conducted by agents who were not involved in the investigation of Congressman Jefferson. They were careful to screen out anything that did not pertain to the subject of the search warrant (Jefferson’s bribe taking).

Gingrich also deliberately left out the fact that the FBI was driven to the measure of a search of Jefferson’s office because Jefferson was refusing to comply with a subpoena and the congressional leadership was being uncooperative. Since Jefferson was concealing documents pertinent to the investigation in his office and since he had access to paper shredders in the office building and since his past behavior indicated that he would attempt to withhold documents from the Bureau (when his home was searched he was caught attempting to conceal documents from them) the FBI judged that it was necessary to search the office.

Now listen closely because this is the most important part. A federal judge agreed with the FBI. That’s right a judge, you know a representative of the THIRD branch of government - the branch constitutionally empowered and required to act as a referee in disputes between the other two – ordered the search by issuing a search warrant.

That is what our Royal Legislature doesn’t want you to dwell upon. It was not an out of control Federal Bureau of Investigation staging an illegal rogue raid upon a protected congressional enclave. It was a law enforcement agency acting in full compliance with the law in executing a properly obtained search warrant on a suspect in a criminal investigation in a place in which they had reasonable grounds to believe that said suspect was concealing evidence necessary to the furtherance of their investigation.

Newt began by noting that the Contract With America contained the provision that all the laws which applied to ordinary Americans must also apply to Congress. He spent the rest of his commentary proving that he has no idea what that actually means.

Cartoon by Cox & Forkum