November 5, 2016
8:00 P.M.
In 72 hours, polls in the East Coast will start closing and the beginning of the end of this national election, Er. nightmare, will be over. In the next three days, millions of our fellow citizens will be deciding on the future of our country. Millions of others have already cast a vote. I bet more than a few of them would like that vote back, given what we learned from the FBI last week. As the story of the corruption at the Clinton Foundation ebbed and flowed, I was reminded of another time in our history when it seemed like our government was out of control with scandal and partisan fights. To be sure, I was only ten in 1974 and certainly not aware enough to know all the details about the nightly news stories I was seeing, but I sure as heck knew the words Watergate, Libby, Nixon, Vietnam War, Israel, Beirut, China, etc. etc. I knew them because back in those days our family, like most, had dinner and then sat and watched the news on one of the three networks available, ABC, CBS and NBC. My parents favorite was Walter Cronkite so CBS was the winner every night. One moment stood out more than any other that year.
On August 9, 1974, I was a happy ten year old enjoying summer and probably heading off to spend time with my friends outside when I was stopped short by an unfamiliar sound. My mother always had soap operas tuned in which I thought were the most boring pieces of dribble I ever watched. On that day her show was interrupted by a breaking news alert. This was in a time when those alerts meant something, usually bad like a major plane crash or a famous death. In this case it was something far more historic. President Nixon, who had won a landslide victory just a little under 2 years earlier, was resigning from office. My mother was transfixed to the TV and when I went to ask her something about it, she waved her hand and said watch, this is history. For the next hour, or maybe longer, I watched the speech, the wave from the helicopter door with his trademark double V's and then watched as President Ford was sworn in. I was too young to know this had happened only 11 years earlier when another Vice President had been sworn in, but my mother remembered it vividly and for her it stirred emotions I could not grasp at the time. The gravity of the event was not lost on me and I never did forget it. As I got older I learned more about the scandal and it became clear to me why Nixon resigned.
In three days, we will be faced with the possibility of another Nixon situation. It's clear now the FBI is eyes deep in investigations involving the Clinton Foundation, the State Department under then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, mishandling of classified information, possible obstruction of justice; the list goes on and on and even involves a disgraced ex-congressman sending naked pictures of himself to a minor. If we elect Clinton, this is what she will bring with her into the Oval Office. On that one point there can be no argument. No matter how much her sympathizers try to spin it, this is not a good situation for her. If we elect her, we risk making it an even worse situation for our country.
One of the spins I found to be most egregious was from Andrea Mitchell, the living fossil who is reporting for NBC on Clinton from the campaign trail. She is insisting in her reports that the FBI case is just a review. She is either senile or just corrupt. Why? Because in order to get information off of the newly found computer, the FBI had to get a search warrant. That means someone at the Justice Department under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, agreed with the FBI that there was probable cause that a crime had been or was going to be committed and they presented the search warrant application to a Federal Judge. That Judge also agreed with the probable cause reason and granted the search warrant. Folks, search warrants are only issued in criminal cases in order to secure evidence suspected of being part of a crime. The bottom line is this; Hillary Rodman Clinton and many of her associates are under criminal investigation by the FBI with reluctant approval of the Obama Justice Department. You might be asking yourself, "So what? What can I do about any of this?"
Unlike the American electorate in 1972, we know for a fact one of the nominees is being criminally investigated by the FBI. I would suggest Donald Trump is raw, imperfect, even a bit of an ogre, but he is not involved in any known criminal investigations by the FBI. We know that because FBI Director Comey refused to say so when asked directly.
If you have not voted yet, I would ask that you think like a citizen and put the good of the country ahead of partisan politics. Democrat, Republican, Independent, it doesn't matter. We are all Americans and if we love this country shouldn't we ask ourselves if it's right to take a chance on someone who is going to drag us through a scandal filled presidency?
