Hopefully, it is becoming more and more obvious why The Establishment and its myrmidons in the Establishment Media (aka MSM) have their bodacious bloomers in a bunch over Everything Russia-Trump. It’s not about Who Met With Whom, Where Trump’s Ties Are Made or Secret Handshakes at the G-20. It sure as hell isn’t about the First or any other Amendment, Immigration, Border Walls or the perennial favorite, Guns ‘N Snowflakes. Nope. It’s all about The Great Unmasking.
Even that requires a little parsing.
As my friend, colleague and LRC co-conspirator, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of FOX News fame recently discussed on our Judging Freedom podcast and other select outlets:
“Just to be clear, there are two kinds of unmasking. In the ordinary course of intelligence work, the White House may request a transcript of a surveilled conversation or some communication between an American and a foreign agent. And it might be necessary for the White House fully to appreciate the content of the communication to know the identity of American; so that American is then unmasked. That is a lawful unmasking.
But if the unmasking was done for political reasons or to embarrass the American or to embarrass a person of affiliated with the American, like the president-elect of the United States, that’s a felony.”
So some “unmasking” is OK, even legal, in certain cases that meet the specific criteria above. Groovy. More obscure rules of the game ready to trip up some political neophyte who didn’t yell “FIRE” in a crowded Nothingburger meeting or snag an adolescent Congressional aide for getting the pizza order wrong. These plainly written rules and regulations can’t possibly be applied America’s Best and Brightest!
Even when hands with the Highest Security Clearance are caught in the restricted Intelligence Cookie Jar, those responsible for meting out justice suddenly become victims of a saltpeter overdose or a unique form of spinal osteoporosis. First symptom: Meetings Behind Closed Doors. (See Susan Rice and others) Elected Officials apparently believe such felonious “Unmasking” is a communicable disease. Open testimony broadcast to the American Public – which has every right to know the unvarnished truth – would infect the entire viewing audience; “National Security” is the hue and cry!
But it is neither.
Leaking internal communications, mixing them with mistruths, half-truths, and outright lies, then appearing on the spuriously named “Nightly News”, has done more to endanger the foundation of the Republic through the corrosive abuse of a Free Press than the frequent airing of non-candidate Trump’s 15 year old comment about the Neanderthal treatment of female genitalia.
The real source behind the Establishment and Establishment Media’s non-stop wailing and gnashing of teeth is the “unmasking” of the new “National Security”. President Trump, despite all shortcomings, has ripped the scab off the simmering allegations about the Deep State, “Fake News” “Opposition Research”, the massive hypocrisy of both parties and their collusion with the nation’s famed intelligence apparatus: NSA, CIA, FBI and the walls of the Oval Office. And then there’s the GCHQ. “National Security” has morphed into something new, dangerous and flagitious.
This new “National Security” is actually the “security” of the National Establishment, the Deep State, the Political-Military-Media Complex and how their intimate relations have undermined what used to be known as the Great American Experiment in Freedom and turned the government into the biggest criminal operation operating in plain sight. “Victims” watch it play out on the evening Kabuki and in heritage newspapers. At the end of the day, some post snarky comments on Facebook or Twitter thinking they have struck a blow for Freedom.
A more learned and credible source, Judge Napolitano, recently stated:
“I’m angry that Rice’s testimony will be in secret because the American public is entitled to know what Susan Rice and the Obama people did, and the American public is entitled to know what the Congress knows and what the Congress will do about it.
When the government operates in secret like this, Democracy dies. Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?”
Unfortunately, we are learning and re-learning the answer.
