What Is Legal?

This is a nation of laws that apply to everyone.

At times those laws impact elected officials and when they do those elected officials if found guilty are penalized.

We have a bit of an unusual situation when that elected official is the President.

The constitution assigns the process to our elected officials to effectively indict and then convict or acquit based on evidence.

One crime would be obstruction of justice.

So is it legal to order witnesses not to answer questions under the pretense of executive privilege?

Does executive privilege exist in a criminal investigation?

If it does and if it can be used it seems to undermine the entire process.

Unfortunately the whole process has been largely compromised by the current state of politics in this country where right or wrong is now determined based on party loyalty, not ethics.

Each side blames the other.  Its up to the American public to figure it out and vote.  Its not going to be easy to fix, but we need to restore ethics into our politics.

Swampier and Swampier

The Federal Government consists of a political part, mostly the people elected and high level appointees and a professional part, people with expertise who have achieved their positions via education and experience.

You wouldn't want to fight a battle with a bunch of inexperienced campaign workers and you shouldn't try to run a professional agency with them either.

Unfortunately, our dontard doesn't really have much regard for professionalism, he is focused on loyalty to him, not to the country or the flag, just to him.

A lot of the federal government is nearly invisible to most people unless you deal with them but they are involved in high level science and technology as well as dealing with the laws and interactions of Government.

Having worked with many of these people over the years, they are of course like everyone else in having problems and issues, but the one thing they do well in almost every case is their jobs.

Politics at most levels of the Federal Government are not part of day to day life, and in fact they are generally prohibited.

If you are working with foreign countries or determining the safety of food for the public or combating disease, you are not interested in which party people belong to.

You hear talk about a deep state and what they get wrong about that is that it isn't the people, it the laws that have piled up over the years dictating how those agencies operate.

Of course when professionalism isn't the primary consideration you get the current administration where people resign weekly it seems for ethics violations only to be replaced with someone just as bad.

It is worse as you see them politicizing every position they can to reward loyalty instead of capability.

The swamp is growing deeper and deeper, no draining going on at all.

Worst President Ever?

You wonder if in the history of this country if the presidency was ever held in lower regard than it is right now?

History tells us that Andrew Johnson was considered a bit uncultured, but he was also a war hero who represented the frontier.

We have had presidents, like say Grant, who was probably overly fond of drink and who had a number of scandals but  who was a hero of the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson almost got impeached, but that was because he wasn't hard enough on the south.

Clearly we had presidents who presided over financial crises, scandals and who also were known womanizers, but generally they had a record of some accomplishment either as president of before they became president.

The current occupant did host a reality TV show and was sort of a businessman, who got famous and sold his brand to a number of shady enterprises and presided over multiple bankruptcies.

Of course he also cheated on all his wives, including the current one, used racial profiling in his real estate business, has been nothing if not an opportunist in his political views, insults his opponents and is a well known liar.

Of course being president and commander in chief makes him a loose cannon to people abroad who undoubtedly think he's untrustworthy and sort of a clown, if admittedly a scary one.

His positions on almost everything are erratic and he somehow thinks building a wall will impact undocumented immigration, when clearly, it is already declining naturally.

One of the things about economics is that over time it corrects itself, meaning jobs go to where labor is cheap/

So that wasn't us and it did result in some pain that is unfortunate.  We are still however the richest country on the planet, at least for now.

We do however have the worse ever president I think.