Dem Explains Why FBI Abuses Not Worse than Watergate

By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent NewsWith evidence piling up that the FBI abused the FISA court process to spy on the Trump campaign, comparison to the 1972 Nixon campaign's effort to spy on his Democratic opponent's campaign have been suggested. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) has labeled the comparison as “absurd.”“Look, the Watergate operation was conducted by burglars,” Schiff pointed out. “Those guys had no prior authorization to spy on Sen. McGovern's campaign. The FBI had the FISA court's permission to spy on the Trump campaign. For Republicans to try to compare the two events is totally unwarranted.”Schiff similarly disposed of allegations that the FBI lied to the FISA court, saying that “federal law enforcement personnel have the right and the obligation to lie if that is what is deemed necessary to protect national security or to apprehend criminal suspects. As the unredacted FBI texts and emails reveal, agents working for the FBI honestly believed that the election of Donald Trump posed a dire threat to US national security. Consequently, the agency's actions aimed at thwarting that outcome cannot be used as evidence against them even if they lied to the court and violated the civil rights of any individual.”Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called Schiff's rationale “disturbing. Its acceptance of the idea that federal police can use deception to obtain court permission to spy on Americans involved in a political campaign acquiesces in the same type of abuse we saw in the Watergate case, but on a much broader scale. For Mr. Schiff to try to excuse it because it was carried out under cover of law essentially endorses official interference in the democratic process of voting. It subverts government of the people and replaces it with the kind of police-state tactics that characterized Communist rule under the former Soviet Union.”In related news, Schiff defended his attempt to obtain naked photos of Trump offered to him by two Russian comedians posing as a high-ranking officials in the Ukrainian government, calling his actions “the epitome of patriotism. Given the obvious shortcomings of Trump's abilities to perform his duties as president it was my sacred duty to obtain whatever information I could to try to oust him from office. Vain as he is, I thought the threat of having his less than prodigious endowment in the genital area exposed might persuade him to resign. I mean, I doubt Trump could measure up to Weiner's wiener. And it didn't bother me one bit that the photos would've been obtained by the invasion of his privacy. In war all is fair.”Bush Convinced Russians Tried to Rig Election for TrumpDespite the emergence of a pattern of improper actions by the FBI, the Obama Administration, and the Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on and smear Donald Trump, former President George W. Bush offered his opinion that “there is clear evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to aid Trump.”“For eight years I was the Decider-in-Chief of the United States of America,” Bush boasted. “I have insights that few other human beings have when it comes to serious matters like statecraft, governance and strategery. I can easily pierce the veil of facts and get to the underlying true reality.”“For me, the most important clue was revealed in the debates,” Bush continued. “While few may have noticed, Trump announced that he would like to have better relations with Russia. In contrast Hillary said she would authorize our Air Force to shoot down Russian jets in Syria. Now ask yourself, who do you think Russia would rather have as the American president: a guy who wants better relations or a woman who's ready to kill their guys? Once you look at everything from this perspective it should be obvious that the only person the Russians would have wanted to help was Trump.”“Take the Uranium One scandal for example,” Bush said. “By exploiting the Clintons' well-known greed, the Russians were able to tar Hillary with a clumsily concealed bribery scheme that would've destroyed her candidacy were it not for the heroic efforts of the media to bury this story under mounds of anti-Trump rhetoric.”“Unfortunately, the Russians are wily adversaries,” Bush observed. “So they concocted a backup plan to dupe Hillary into buying a contrived dossier of dirt on Trump that diverted her from campaigning on her winning issues of higher taxes, bigger spending, more regulation and open borders. So confident was she of winning by attacking his character with this dossier and the 'pussy grabbing' tape that she cut back her campaign appearances to rest up for her inauguration. As we all saw to our great consternation, the Russian scheme worked like a charm and Trump eked out a victory in the Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote.”“Despite Russian success in overturning the election of the most qualified nominee of either Party in this nation's long history, I remain optimistic that all is not lost,” the former President said. “Hopefully, patriots like Comey and Mueller will yet find a way to oust Trump and place a more qualified person on the throne. I think a good compromise candidate to install as president would be my brother Jeb. He's got the breeding and the experience needed to govern this great country.”In related news, Hillary Clinton now claims she was only following Peter Strzok's advice when she used Bleachbit to erase her subpoenaed emails. “Considering the vast expertise of the FBI and my own relative ignorance about computer security who can blame me for trusting their judgment?” she asked. “It also made sense since murder suspects on Law and Order are always using bleach to destroy evidence. At the very least, I think I should have immunity for merely following a suggestion given by an officer in the nation's premier law-enforcement agency.”California DreamingThe formerly bankrupt City of Stockton, California is planning to implement a basic universal income scheme that would pay out $6,000 per year to select low-income households. The scheme is the brainchild of Mayor Michael Tubbs who hopes “to demonstrate that providing people with money they may spend in anyway they choose will inspire imitation across the land. The first phase of the plan is to choose 100 families that will receive $500 per month for 18 months and see what happens.”Renowned economist Thomas Sowell criticized Tubbs' idea contending that “if you give people something for nothing it will tend to make them more complacent in their poverty rather than inspiring them to better themselves, as the Mayor naively hopes. His 'experiment' has been carried out on a much larger scale by socialist redistribution schemes in other countries and in America's lengthy 'war on poverty' that has ensnared generations of poor people in a never ending cycle of dependency over the last 50 plus years.”Tubbs dismissed this criticism as “an outdated racist way of thinking. Those other programs were all designed and operated by white men and imposed on black folks. My plan is conceived by a black man and will be administered by those this black man chooses to run it. This will give us a pure test of the concept free from the racist bias that has ruined all previous experiments.”Urinating Illegal Stabs ManIn Maryland, Salvador Gomez-Lopez, a native of El Salvador in the United States illegally will go on trial for stabbing a man waiting at a bus stop. The attack sprang from the victim's objection to Gomez urinating in front of fellow bus passengers. Arresting police described Gomez as “drunk and belligerent.”In the US House of Representatives, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) gave an eight hour speech blaming Trump's “anti-immigrant policies for this tragedy. The hostility of the President toward immigrants seeking a better life in America is the primary cause for this incident. If Mr. Gomez didn't have to live in the shadows for fear of deportation he wouldn't have to urinate in public. Nor would he have to bear the gibes of some wealthy white man demanding that he find a toilet to do his business. His impulse to stab the man tormenting him was a foreseeable outcome of Trump's refusal to grant amnesty to the 30 million undocumented Americans that have entered this country without his permission.”“Poor Nancy is losing her grip on reality,” Trump said in a one-minute reply. “Mr. Gomez is precisely the kind of immigrant we don't need coming into our country. He has no respect for decency. Public restrooms are plentiful in America. He has no respect for human life. Stabbing a person for trying to uphold decency is not justified. The Democrats' efforts to make America safe for the likes of Mr. Gomez endangers the lives of law-abiding citizens everywhere. He is a sterling example of why we need tighter border enforcement.”Meanwhile, in another distribution of “crumbs” stemming from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, General Motors announced that 50,000 factory workers will each receive a profit-sharing check in the amount of $11,750. Pelosi still insists that “this money frittered away on relatively wealthy auto workers could have been better spent by the government providing the kind of aid that immigrants like Mr. Gomez so desperately need.”In related news, MSNBC's Chris Matthews argued that “Republican attacks on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are ethnic politics. Rep. Pelosi may herself be a rich white woman, but she is also a champion of ethnic minorities, so much so that her little grandson says he wishes he had brown skin so his Grammy would love him more. So, when we think about it in these terms, we can't escape the conclusion that Republicans are basically covert racists when they argue against her policy positions.”A Satirical Look at Recent NewsJohn Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.