Tellingly, the FBI statement begins with the words “We are appalled…”.

A professional and non-partisan organization would never put that sentiment up front. The leadership of such an organization would instinctively understand that their emotional reaction to such an allegation is utterly irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of it.

Their first concern would instead be to reassure the people they serve of their unwavering dedication to the objective application of the law.

As a result, I am convinced that they are indeed appalled… that they have been caught!

This is one of those things that everybody needs to recognize.
——————–

Yes, indeed. We really are at the end of our nation. As authorized and conceived.

Yes. The military defense (mostly Navy at the founding), Courts, a Foreign Office (“Department of State”) are almost all called forth by the Constitution. Plus, a Post Office, as per Ben Franklin. And a Treasury office for Federal spending. All together are the original institutions that were authorized.

For decades, beginning with the Post Office, libertarian thinkers have argued against such marginal institutions as the Post Office.

For example, in the second half of the 19th Century, a private mail carrier was putting the PO on the ropes, financially. Only a law passed by Congress, granting the PO a monopoly over first-class delivery, saved this Federal institution. It generously served rhe “spoils system” of ruling.

Interestingly, the owner of this competing company was himself a Constitutional lawyer.

Recent decades have seen rethinking about other unscrutinized Federal legacies, also not in the Constitution, like the FBI. In the 1990s, the Siege in Waco was the kindling for ire against the FBI and the so-called “Justice Department.”

The FBI originated in the early 20th Century in order to enforce the Mann Act, a federal law outlawing the transportation of women across state lines “for immoral purposes” as it was delicately put.
That is, the fear of “White slavery” or prostitution, often enough by black men, drove the passage of this Federal Act, supplementing local or state laws. And subsequently the FIB was created.

Federal level law enforcement remained controversial until the misadventure of prohibition of alcohol — or really the restriction of its public sale — combined with the newly dominant cities with the 1920s, and distrust of new anti-Protestant immigrant populations into American life inflated the demand for federal policing over the next two decades.

Only then, throughout and after the 1930s, did J Edgar Hoover and fictional Fed (albeit Treasury) heroes like Elliott Ness and his “Untouchables” squad enter the mainstream through popular culture in print and via radio serials.

That’s how we got the FBI — our Democrat Stasi enforcers — seen as somehow essential, and against any Constitutional mention or explicit Founding remit.

Thus, some libertarians have advocated for the devolution of its responsibilities to each of the states, completely, and therefore the abolition of the FIB as a Federal body

This policy proposal logically leads to the
similar scrutiny of the DOJ as another redundant and egregious Federal overreaching apparatus.

However, the problem of too many laws in our “Ham Sandwich Nation” — as law Prof Glenn Reynolds christened the now universal menace, and thus any average person was reckoned to commit two felonies a day in the 1990s, which later became three or four — means that Federal prosecution now requires the selective enforcement of the law.

In this way, “we done it to ourselves– we’ve enabled the prosecution of every Ruling Class feared dissenting group out of existence. And the death of organized political opposition is here, as authoritarian s become totalitarian.

Robert Heinlein’s remedy — an elected body charged with abolishing laws — gets more attractive to us every passing season of the year.

If we want to go this route, as a nation, then let us begin immediately with the states to set forth a model. Florida? Texas? North Carolina, perhaps?

Otherwise, I can foresee no remedy but mass violence.

This is one of those things that everybody needs to recognize. I’d like to think that there are many exceptions among ordinary Democrats, but progressives in general have made it very clear that they don’t believe in or respect the constitutional system. They will appeal to it if it seems in their interests to do so, and trample it if that’s in their interests. What they want is constitutional. What they don’t want is not.