If any LRC readers have not read Jim Bovard’s Feeling Your Pain, which exposes the many abuses of the Clinton Administration, I would highly recommend it. I have been saying that each successive presidency leaves a legacy of abuse and expansion of central government power to the next administration to expand even further.

In our criticisms of the Bush Administration — and they are legion — we forget just how abusive the Clinton Administration was. However, this administration is so bad that there are times when we long for a return to the Clintons, so I think that Feeling Your Pain is useful in that it reminds us that government abuse is universal.Perhaps the most important lesson here is that the successive administrations go out of their way to support the previous government no matter how bad it is. The Clinton Administration used literal criminal methods to support the conduct of the ATF and FBI in the Ruby Ridge killings, even though these things occurred during the first Bush Administration. The fatal ATF raid at the Branch Davidian property in February 1993 was planned during the Bush years, yet the Clintons defended the raid, and then went on to make things even worse with the subsequent killing of nearly everyone who had survived the initial raid.

It was breathtaking to read about the outright criminality of the Justice Department during the Clinton years, but then we realize that nothing has changed; it only is worse. The 9/11 attacks are to this administration what the Oklahoma City bombing was to the Clinton Administration: a godsend that enabled the government to go on a rampage of lies, abuse, murder, and outright commission of crimes.