Thread by @JMHendersonSr

The premise?

An attorney with the Department of Justice leaks information to a reporter, with the intention and design that the reporter would then publish articles on the subject.

The goal of the scheme? Shaking loose evidence and witnesses to prop up charges that the government would like to be able to prosecute.

Yes, it seemed shocking when "Absence of Malice" debuted. Could those charged with investigating crimes in the USA be so corrupt, so vindictive, so low down and dirty?



Well, yes, it turns out they can be.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has conducted an extensive criminal and counterintelligence investigation into allegations that Donald Trump or his surrogates conducted a coordinated program of collusion intended to pervert the 2016 federal election.

We have his assurance that no such chargeable criminal conspiracy took place. Doubters abound.

With the Apostle Thomas who demanded his skeptic's right to examine the holes in Jesus' hands and side, these sudden Mueller skeptics demand access to the entire Mueller report AND all supporting documentation.

And I bring this clip of Absence of Malice to you to caution you about how contrary to goodness, decency, and the rule of law it would be to cavort with those that make such demands.

We know that, in his two-year investigation, Mueller had everything that could be gained by 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, analysts, accountants, & other staff, 2800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 230 communication records, 13 requests to foreign governments, and 500 witnesses.

Looking back on that dragnet, and despite the very fine-toothed comb that Mueller undoubtedly applied to the evidentiary materials gotten from them, he concluded that there wasn't a conspiracy to commit collusion, or actual collusion.

But do you know what you are likely to find?

Things to which you don't really think the US government -- in the ordinary course of things -- should be allowed to have access.

Pen registers take down the telephone numbers that dial into or out of a targeted phone. In the era of the internet, pen registers also include programs and devices that monitor internet communications.

So, you have a pen register authorized by a court. It records that a call was made from phone X to phone Y. If phone Y is unrelated to an investigation into criminal conduct, why do you need to know that such a call was placed?

If Target A, in a moment of existential crisis, dialed phone Y because it was his parents' home phone and he hadn't spoken to his parents in years due to a falling out after he came out of the closet, why do you "have the right as an American citizen" to know this about Target A?

You don't, you dim-witted bull's pizzle.

And there is so much more than that.

Maybe non-Target D came onto Mueller's radar. An FBI agent is assigned to wait outside Target D's home in Brooklyn with instructions to sort through her garbage after it is dumped by the garbage collectors into the open back of their dump truck. He does so.

He makes a five-page list of the entire contents of a week's worth of garbage from non-Target D's trash. Let's set aside the question of why you have "the right as an American citizen" to see the FBI agent's memo listing the garbage.

Let's ask a more profound question and let's contemplate the more profoundly disturbing answer it might provoke: why would you WANT to read such a list?

What the hell is wrong with your brain, you filthy bung?

You probably are sitting there, on your throne of smug certainties, thinking, so what if irrelevant evidence divulges that a witness (or, deliciously, a target) in the investigation is a closeted gay man, or that her trash indicated a morbid fascination with essential oils.

Why shouldn't the public know these things?

Well, sweetie, why the public shouldn't know these things is that -- setting aside profound concerns raised by the Fourth Amendment's protection for the persons, dwellings, and possessions of citizens -- we, as a people, are endowed with INALIENABLE rights.

Among the great rights marking our humanity is the right to LIBERTY. And, in LIBERTY there is a broad swath of BROAD DEFENSE FOR PRIVACY.

It's really weird that those that DEMAND a complete disgorgement of the Mueller record give no consideration to that RIGHT OF PRIVACY.

Would you like to know why it is WEIRD?

It is WEIRD because it is the concern for PRIVACY, guarded by the natural right to liberty, to which these Hell Hounds point their muzzles whenever the question of abortion is addressed as a legal question.

It is WEIRD because it WAS the concern for PRIVACY, that led activists and courts to undo regulations and laws on the manufacture, sale, distribution, possession, and use of contraceptives.

And it is WEIRD because it was the concern for PRIVACY that led to the judicial rejection of laws criminalizing homosexual conduct and relationships.

It is WEIRD because, while privacy has served as a big stick for the beating of notions that these very Hellions reject --

the right to life of unborn children, the right of the State to define marriage, and the right of the State to enforce criminal laws against various kinds of sexual acts --

where PRIVACY most clearly applies, in guaranteeing to each individual the power to protect themselves, their papers, their possessions, and their homes from public exposure, they have lost all sense of its meaning and its CONSTITUTIONAL DIMENSIONS.

Now, sure, there is a curious corner in the human psyche: as the National Enquirer has often put it: "Enquiring minds want to know."

But even the National Enquirer doesn't contend that "Enquiring minds have THE RIGHT TO KNOW."

And no, as it turns out, you DON'T have the right to know. You're just curious.

No, not curious. You're nosey. And being nosey doesn't give you a damn right to anything.

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