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For Speaker McCarthy: Lincoln on Conspiracy, Durham Report
Many of us have explicitly granted Speaker McCarthy the benefit of the doubt, tentatively, as part of a fair deal with the House Freedom Caucus (HFC). Not because we are suddenly McCarthy true believers, but because these seem to be the terms of our coalition. Via the HFC, we supported his Speakership in exchange for his recognition and support of some HFC priorities. I think it’s going well so far.
With the Durham report out, there is an opportunity to take that information and pursue it where it may lead. This is fortunate, as this may be the last (it may already be too late) chance to halt what Lincoln called “a piece of machinery” in his House Divided speech.
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,—Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,—and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in—in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
Lincoln spoke of what we now call a conspiracy. He did not use the term in that speech, but any decent analysis of the speech calls it out as such.
I would like to point out for the Speaker’s benefit that he has the unhappy duty to be the senior ranking Republican in office at what is definitely a potential fuse to civil war. I expect the Durham report to be memory-holed and then to return with a vengeance. This is not going to go away.
I do not know what form a civil war might take, except to say that it won’t resemble the previous. Most likely it will not resemble anything seen before. Some things never change — some things only happen once. We will not see it coming until it is here, as with an earthquake. Yet we may see accelerating signs that justify heightened expectations of the event, as with earthquakes.
I think that the “nothingness” of the Durham report, combined with the explosive implications when even cursory analysis is applied to the facts of the past eleven years (from Benghazi and the email server), points to a bad time soon to arrive.
Most of Lincoln’s effort in his speech was to describe the peculiar set of events that clearly indicated a concerted, behind-the-scenes, literal conspiracy to ensure the continuation of slavery regardless of elections or the Constitution. The point he supported with this argument was not that the nation would cease to exist, but that it would cease to be divided — one way or another.
We are at a similar moment now. This report is the last card dealt, and now there’s nothing for it but to play our hands. And one way or another, this nation will not continue as it has in recent years. One way or another, the lawless and unconstitutional abuses will end.
I beg Speaker McCarthy to take the time to get his response — our response right. The lines are drawn. The AngryCons will be here for him if he delivers a forceful denunciation of obvious crimes while prosecuting what criminals he may with alacrity. And since he is the Speaker, not a prosecutor, that means some knock-down, drag-out political fighting. For us. Against them.
We would appreciate it very much.
Published in General
Relocate the FBI HQ to Missouri.
Burn it to the ground, and don’t relocate.
The key will be how to prosecute their crimes with the DOJ and FBI rife with the criminals who helped to perpetuate these wretched crimes.
Nonsense. Lincoln was a good guy, so he clearly didn’t believe in any conspiracies.
Will not happen.
Figured I would ask.
Yeah.
Sigh. We can ask. Maybe someday, one of these yahoos will surprise us.
Alvin Bragg found a way to turn a federal crime into a state crime.
And statutes of limitations can be retroactively adjusted to suit prosecutorial goals.